升
级
利
用
工
具
U pKit
Giuditta Sartori
Mat. 817089
a.y. 2014 / 2015
Politecnico di Milano
School of Design
Double degree master
in Product Service
System Design
Tutors Francesco Zurlo from Politecnico di Milano and Yang
Weqing from Tongji University of Shanghai
6
Upkit: the approach
and methods for generate ideas
in Upcycle design field
7
摘
要
当我还是个孩子的时候,我和我的祖父会花整个下午来制作一些
小物件,如利用建筑房屋剩余物料来制作便携式鸟屋、老鼠和蜗
牛。我总是能够发现机会重新利用材料制作有用的东西，这让我
觉得非常有趣和令人兴奋。现在回想起来,我还对那些充满快乐
和乐趣的下午记忆犹新。经验丰富的老人伴随着一个五岁孩子
的单纯和创造力足以做出伟大的事情。直到几年前,我才明白我
和祖父做过的项目是利用一个简单和有趣的方式做的升级利用
项目。工业革命之前,当利用新技术去制作新东西的成本大于利
用旧材料制作的成本时,升级利用成了一个不争的事实。面料分
为纤维如羊毛和棉花,再次分解后纺织成新产品。亨利·福特甚
至也参与过升级利用的早期形式,他利用了装汽车零部件的板条
箱来制作汽车底板。在可持续的未来,我认为我们不可能像今天
这样用破坏的方法来对待自然资源。实际上,我们根本不需要浪
费,因为毕竟浪费是一个问题，我今天认为的浪费在未来可能会
V
被视为资源。在某种程度上,升级利用过程是顺理成章的,我们可
以每个人身上找到态度，但真正的升级利用项目需要一套规则和
目标,去帮助维持可持续的方法和可复制和可分解的数量。答案
是一个新趋势: 升级利用。升级利用是使材料转化为更高价值的
东西的过程，大于或等于“二次生命“。它已经越来越被认为是
一个很有前景的方式去减少物质和能源的使用,并产生可持续的
生产和消费。升级利用设计是我一直以来的一个兴趣爱好,我想
强调的是设计师的创造力如何能成为一个伟大的工具来提高和给
出实际的想法让材料再利用,否则只是浪费。这项工作可能给启
发和帮助设计师在升级利用项目的设计阶段提供一个可持续的方
法,旨在重用废料作为设计对象,旨在通过给废物提供额外价值，
从而减少对环境的影响,。处理一个升级利用项目意味着遵守规
则,构建一个方向清晰的流程。我努力提高我在这个领域的经验,
开始做一些项目，包括在米兰时尚领域的一些创业项目,在米兰
我与Riva (成立于1920年，著名的意大利木材公司)合作设计了
升级利用珠宝系列。在米兰现有四家商店在出售我们升级利用的
产品。在中国我也找到了自我提升的方法, 将我学到的知识充分
运用到项目上，在无锡江南大学我参与了利用工业废料制作四轮
升级利用设计， 也参与了最近在上海举行的中国2015 GIGA材料
挑战大赛，在这两个项目中我都收获了荣誉。本文主要从探索升
级利用主题想法的角度出发，并提出启发人们这一现象的具体解
决方案,或一个新的趋势。在以下几页中将讲到米兰和无锡的项
目，阐述设计师是怎样作为团体和产生废料的公司之间的桥梁,
,但是我的论文中最重要的是如何帮助设计师创建升级利用项目
和如何传播这些知识。因为我在意大利上大学,所以我的设计过
程中使用了产品服务系统设计方法。产品服务系统是社会变化从
关注生产和消费产品到产品与服务组件高度集成取代传统的材料
密集生产的系统,为满足个人和组织通过使用更多的非物质化的
系统解决方案需求提供了可能性。本文的目的是奠定基础，并强
调需要一个工具,有助于产生可持续改造环境的想法,科学地解释
这个新趋势“升级利用”如何有两方面的积极作用。首先对环
境,避免了原材料的使用和加工过程中能源浪费。第二对经济,公
司处理废料的成本因为升级利用可以成为利润。帮助设计师产生
创意的工具和方法是一门相当新的学科,但这已渗透到不同的领
域，从设计一个网站或应用程序到婚礼设计。升级利用也是开启
了第一次科学探索的里程碑，支持本论文的观点——升级利用是
一个可持续的处理废料的方式。目的在于建造通往设计方式和升
级利用的之间桥梁。
关键词：升级利用、可持续沟通、工具包、升级利用平台
VI
ABST
VII
RACT
VII
Until I was a child with my grandfather I spent the afternoons to
build small objects such as portable bottle taps small birdhouses
using waste materials of the house under construction. I always
found it very fun to have the opportunity to reuse materials to build
something useful. Looking back now that I grew remember those
afternoons with so much joy and so much fun. The simplicity and
the creativity of a child of only five years alongside the experience
of an elderly person is capable of great things. Few years ago, I understand that the projects I have done with my grandfather were
upcycle projects in an easy and funny way. Before the Industrial
Revolution, when new technologies made it more cost-effective to
create new things rather than reuse them, upcycling was a fact of
life. Fabrics were separated into fibers like wool and cotton, broken
down again and spun into new products. Henry Ford even practiced an early form of upcycling, using the crates car parts were
shipped in as vehicle floorboards. In a sustainable future, I think it
is impossible to treat our natural resources in the wreck less manner that we do today. Actually we do not need waste at all, because
after all, waste is a question of perception what I consider as waste
today could be considered as resources in the future. In a way, the
upcycle process is something natural and we can find some attitude in every human being but the real upcycle project need a set
of rules and goal that help to preserve the sustainable approach
and output that could be replicable and be disassembled. The answer is a new trend: upcycle. Upcycling is a process in which used
materials are converted into something of higher value and/or
quality in their second life. It has been increasingly and recognized as one promising means to reduce material and energy use,
and to engender sustainable production and consumption. The
upcycle is a passion that I cultivate a long time, and what I want to
highlight is how the designer’s creativity can become a great tool to
enhance and give practical ideas for reuse of materials that would
otherwise be just waste. This work introduces a possibility to educate and help the designer to have a sustainable approach during
the designing phase of upcycle project, which are aimed at reusing
waste materials in design objects, aiming at reducing the environmental impact of their disposal, by providing to them an added value. Tackling an upcycle project means following rules, structured
within a well defined process. I try to improve my experience in
this area, creating some projects including a start-up in the fashion
IX
field based in Milan, where I create some collections of upcycled
jewelry in partnership with Riva in 1920 (famous Italian wood
company). Now four shops in Milan selling our upcycle products.
Also here in China I was able to grow a personal approach and I applied my knowledge in the project for the four round of Upcycling
design of industry leftovers, in Jiangnan University, Wuxi and the
last context that I made in China at GIGA Material Challenge 2015,
Shanghai. In both I won a prize. This thesis is born from the desire to explore the theme of upcycle and propose a concrete solution that will educate people to this phenomenon, including a
new dynamic. Designer as a bridge between the communities and
companies that produce waste, how will show in the following pages for Milan and Wuxi projects, but the most important thing that
became the output of my thesis is how to help he designer to create a upcycle project and how to spread this knowledge? Since my
Italian university background, I uses the Product Service System
Design approach in the design process. Product-service systems
means that the society change from a focus on producing and
consuming products to a society where the service components
are increasingly replacing the more traditional material intensive
ways of product manifestation, that provides individuals and organizations with the possibility to fulfil needs through the provision of more dematerialized system solutions. The purpose of this
thesis is to lay the foundations and to highlight the need to have
a tool that helps to generate ideas in the context of sustainable
upcycle, and explain how this new trend “upcycle” is having a twofold positive effect. First for the environment, avoiding the use of
raw materials and waste of energy for processing. Second for economic, because the disposal costs of companies thanks to upcycle
can become profit. The tools and methods to help the designer in
developing ideas are a fairly new discipline, but that is penetrating
into different areas from design a website or application up to the
toolkit for designing weddings. Upcycle is also a world that is beginning to discover the first scientific bases that support the thesis
that the approach upcycle could be a sustainable way to dispose of
waste. The project want to design this bridge between the design
methods and the world of upcycle.
Key Words: Upcycle, Sustainable Communication, Toolkit,
Upcycle Platform
X
INDEX
ABSTRACT
V
INDEX
XI
LIST OF FIGURES
XIV
01.
The grassroots of sustainable approach 19
1.1
1.2
1.3
1.4
1.5
1.6
Are we in the bubble?
The waste situation in the world
Upcycle: the story and the method
First pillar: spread a sustainable business
Second pillar: community as an inspiration
Third pillar: less bad is not good
20
23
30
36
40
43
02. Approach and methods: product serice 49
system design as a main driver for the
project and research development
2.1
2.2
2.3
2.4
Product service system design approach
Emphatize and finalize the research
Ideation and definition of the idea
Fix the design parameter
50
52
52
53
03. Research: analysis of the upcycle field
and design
55
3.1
56
Current body of literature about upcycle
XI
3.2
3.3
3.4
3.5
3.6
3.7
Four types of upcycle context
The behaviors today: survey and interview
University, experience in the field
Gamification and generation of knowledge
Design method: cards
Frame the main challenges
04. Project: the cards method became a
bridge between designers and
upcycle ideas
4.1Personas
4.2
Main challenge and what if
4.3
Deck of cards and book for generate knoledge
4.4
What, when, where and how use upkit
4.5
Web site: open source aproach
05. Design: touch-points
5.1
5.2
5.3
58
74
78
84
88
98
107
118
123
123
149
171
173
174
180
187
Design and graphic
Pilot and prototyping
Feasibility of the project
CONCLUSIONS
192
APPENDIX
1.
Product service system design approach
2.
Upcycle definition
3.
Upcycle company
4.
Upcycle survey
194
196
199
206
212
BIBLIOGRAPHY
LINKOGRAPHY
GLOSSARY
216
219
221
XII
LIST OF
FIGURES
Fig. 1.1 - World production of Municipal Solid Waste
(MSW), 2012*-2015
Fig. 1.2 - A child eats breakfast in a garbage dump,
where hundreds of people live and make a living by
recycling waste and making charcoal, in the Tondo
section of Manila, Dec. 9, 2007. Photo by Darren
Whiteside/Reuters.
Fig. 1.3 - These boys navigate through heaps of rubbish
on the streets of Santa Fe, Argentina. Photo by Damir
Sagolj/Reuters
Fig. 1.4 - These boys balance over a murky puddle in
Kabul, Afghanistan. Photo by Andrew Biraj/Reuters
Fig. 1.5 - Sana, a 5-year-old girl, plays on a cloth sling
hanging from a signaling pole as smoke from a garbage
dump rises next to a railway track in Mumbai, India, in
2012. Photo by Vivek Prakash/Reuters
Fig. 1.6 – Triangle that represents the scale of
importance of waste disposal
Fig. 1.7 - Pablo Picasso, 1942, Tête de taureau (Bull’s
Head), Bicycle seat and handlebars, 33.5 x 43.5 x 19 cm,
Musée Picasso, Paris
Fig. 2.1 - Three models representing the Design
process.
Fig. 3.1 - Cumulative frequency of the number of the
XIII
sampled publications about Upcycle
Fig. 3.2 - Loopworks label of second skin of pc.
Fig. 3.3 - H&M campaign for old clothes.
Fig. 3.4 - Terracycle process and products
Fig. 3.5 - Recyclebank website
Fig. 3.6 - Hipcycle products sells on website
Fig. 3.7 - Above the system map and the encounters
maps of MIDA
Fig. 3.8 - Me and my partner in the factory choosing
wood waste and below the ring collection.
Fig. 3.9 - The covers of the MIDA catalogs
Fig. 3.10 - Riva 1920 waste materials using for create the
product
Fig. 3.11 - MIDA, Man collections of upcycle bowties
Fig. 3.12 - MIDA, Woman collections of upcycle rings
Fig. 3.13 - People that are participated in the upcycle
contest in Wuxi
Fig. 3.14 - Main upcycle materials
Fig. 3.15 - Me and my team that are testing and working
on upcycle project in Wuxi
Fig. 3.16 - Me and my team with the upcycle project
Fig. 3.17 - Deck cards analysis and competitors
Fig. 3.18 - Deck cards analysis
Fig. 3.19 - Picture made by Santtu Mustonen
Fig. 3.20 - The upcycled Neckless
Fig. 3.21 - http://www.bbc.com/news/23309804 BBC
news reportage from India waste situations
Fig. 4.1 - Photo of cards toolkit
Fig. 4.2 - Illustrations of personas
Fig. 4.3 - Five process steps
Fig. 4.4 - The map of the tools design connected with
the process steps
Fig. 4.6 - Upkit elements
Fig. 4.7 - Upkit cards divided in 5 process cards, 17 eco
pillars cards and 33 tools cards
Fig. 4.8 - Photo and illustrations of UpKit cards deck
Fig. 4.9 - Photo and illustrations of UpKit Guide Book
Fig. 4.10 - Photo and illustrations of UpKit Notes Map
Fig. 4.11 - The 13 types of the maps that are inside the
Notes Map
XIV
Fig. 4.12 - The illustrations for the personas and the
places
Fig. 4.13 - Illustrations about the use of the Upkit
Fig. 4.14 - Upkit user journey map
Fig. 5.1 - Schematization of formats and optimization of
the space for the realization of the toolkit
Fig. 5.2 – Color palette of UpKit
Fig. 5.3 – Structure of UpKit logo
Fig. 5.4 - Graphics and colors of the cards tools
Fig. 5.5 - Graphics and colors of the Eco pillars cards
Fig. 5.6 - Graphics and colors of the maps inside the
Notes map
Fig. 5.7 - Prototyping graphics of the tool kit
Fig. 5.8 - Photo of personas that made the
prototyping
Fig. 5.9 - Prototyping the experience storyboard
Fig. 5.10 - Upkit business model canvas
XV
XVI
20
1
21
THE GRASSROOTS
OF SUSTAINABLE
APPROACH
1.1 Are we in the bubble?
Sustainability significantly challenges social and aesthetics norms.
Indeed, the development of more viable ways of living implies
changes in the way we look at objects and, more globally, on the
way we interact with the material world. It also involves changes in
the way we construct the built environment and, therefore, in the
way things look. We can observe that, the more a design solution
presents environmental potential, the more the solution in question
is likely to look different from what we know. (Anne Marchand, Stuart
Walker, P. De Coninck, Management of natural resources: sustainable
development and ecological hazards, C. A. Brebbia, M.E. Conti, E.
Tiezzi , 2006).
From design a product for a concrete need to sell every kind
of products though the advertising campaign. Today most of
the people are under control of mass production through the
advertisement campaign. We are buried of unnecessary objects
and every time we desired something that we do not need, and
so we are growing uneducated, we cannot understand what we
really need. In the Design for real world, Papanek wrote: “Much
recent design has satisfied only evanescent wants and desires, while
the genuine needs of man have often been neglected by the designer.”
(Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and
Social Change; Pantheon Books, 1971).
There are professions more harmful than industrial design, but
22
only a very few of them. Only one profession is phonier: Advertising
design. The work consist in persuading people to buy things they
don’t need, with money they don’t have, in order to impress others
who don’t care, is probably the phoniest field in existence today.
Industrial design, by concocting the tawdry idiocies hawked by
advertisers, comes a close second. Never before in history have
grown men sat down and seriously designed electric hairbrushes,
rhinestone-covered file boxes, and mink carpeting for bathrooms,
and then drawn up elaborate plans to make and sell these gadgets
to millions of people. Before, if a person liked killing people, he had
to become a general, purchase a coalmine, or else study nuclear
physics. Today, industrial design has put murder on a massproduction basis. By designing criminally unsafe automobiles that
kill or maim nearly one million people around the world each year,
by creating whole new species of permanent garbage to clutter
up the landscape, and by choosing materials and processes that
pollute the air we breathe, designers have become a dangerous
breed.
In an age of mass production when everything must be planned
and designed, design has become the most powerful tool with
which man shapes his tools and environments. This demands high
social and moral responsibility from the designer. It also demands
greater understanding of the people by those who practice design
and more insight into the design process by the public.
For thirty years, John Thackara has traveled the world in his search
of stories about the practical steps taken by communities to realize
a sustainable future. Community is important keyword.
What means community today? Design could be unique way of
analyzing a community in a more holistic and multidisciplinary
manner. For this reason, I am not focused on the single user but on
the entire community as the enabler of local change, as a resource
to be valorized and from which to learn. Design professionals are
required to have two main competences: on one hand the ability
to gain knowledge about the community by field immersion and to
develop empathic relations with its members. On the other hand,
to use design knowledge to design with and for the community,
developing tools to enable the co-design of new solutions coherent
23
with the context and allowing non-designers to apply their
knowledge and professional skills to the issues discussed.
John Thackara born in 1951, studied philosophy and journalism,
and is now designers the founder and Director of The Doors of
Perception. He is a writer, speaker and design producer. From 1993
to 1999, he was the first Director of the Netherlands Design Institute.
In 2001, he directed “Design of the time” biennale, which takes place
in the North-East of England. In 2008, he directed “City Eco Lab”
at the Cité du Design Saint-Etienne, French design biennial. We
are filling up the world with technology and devices, but we have
lost sight of an important question: What is this stuff for? What
value does it add to our lives? So asks author John Thackara in his
new book, In the Bubble: Designing for a Complex World; to get a
glimpse of what this designer had to say about sustainability and
society. Are addressed ten categories on which the author of the
book considers how you could improve and produce less waste?
The questions is about what it means sustainability.
Thackara’s intention is to describe the world in which we live to
open your eyes. He describes a transformation that is taking place
now not in a remote science fiction future; it’s not about, as he puts
it, “the schlock of the new” but about radical innovation already
emerging in daily life. In the bubble is the result of encounters
and shared experiences over several years that gave rise to the
questions.
In fact, every concept that John Thackara expresses in his book
is supported by both positive and negative examples. It also adds
his father and designer experience that enriches the readings and
open to new ways of seeing things. From this book I have learn a
number of lessons, the most important is what I decided to put
in my opening thesis of the quote of the aviator. ‘’ If you want to
build a ship, do not divide the work and give orders; teach them to
yearn for the vast and endless sea.” (John Thackara, In the Bubble:
Designing in a Complex World; Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2005.)
The French aviator and writer Antoine Saint-Exupe’ry. When I
found myself designing the most important questions: what I am
planning to do? Are there needs? Today so many products would
be enough intelligent services to prevent it would produce other
24
useless products.
Another keyword is education, how designer could educate
community to look the future and improve the lifestyle? Every
day all the people are facing problem, and waste a lot of product
without understand the possibility about what they have in their
hands. The upcycle does not mean just create something new, but
use something that already exists for create a new product. There
are many rules that the designer have to follow when decided
to create an upcycle project or the design of a new facility in a
sustainable way by following precise rules because product is one
hundred percent sustainable. So the questions that arises is what
is the difference between upcycle and recycle? Above all, can it say
that one is better than the other is?
However, before answering these questions I would like to introduce
a historical basis that better explains what the one and the other,
who are the founding fathers, the theories behind, before coming
to a real confrontation. So what is the role of designer today? Maybe
a new way to use what we have done could be a way.
Now the upcycle process comes to designers as a feasible and a
plausible solution to give new life to old products, which will
inevitably become waste. Victor Papanek died in 1998, but 40 years
after his book “Design for the real world” was first published, it is
still in print and hugely influential and he is praised as a pioneer
of sustainable and humanitarian design. “One of my first jobs after
leaving school was to design a table radio” Papanek wrote in Design
for the Real World. “This was shroud design: the design of external
covering of the mechanical and electrical guts. It was my first, and I
hope my last, encounter with appearance design, styling, or design
‘cosmetics’.” (John Thackara, In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex
World; Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2005.) And further, he opined:
“Only a small part of our responsibility lies in the area of aesthetics.”
Papanek traveled around the world, he gave lectures about his
ideas for ecologically sound design and designs to serve the poor,
the disabled, the elderly and other minority segments of society.
He wrote or co-wrote eight books. How could the designer, who
must make a living actually serve “real needs” of human beings?
25
“I have tried to demonstrate that by freely giving 10 percent of his
time, talents, and skills the designer can help.” In other words, a
willingness to volunteer. Design can and must become a way in
which people can participate in changing society.
1.2 The waste situation in the world
The idea of sustainability is inspired by the late discoveries of anthropogenic impacts on the natural environment and the conclusion that current patterns of human activity cannot be sustained
indefinitely. Sustainability is the ultimate future goal. However, the
current global situation is in a condition of unsustainability that
can be characterized by three critical trends: overpopulation and
continuing population growth, especially in developing countries.
Accelerating resource exploitation and increasing pollution levels,
primarily by the developed countries, but increasingly in different
countries in transition. Over-consumption, especially in developed countries.
With the rise of modern industrial civilization, our demand for
resources is increasing, resulting in the decrease of primary
resources. Today, we are meeting the bottleneck of resources
shortage and environmental destruction. It has become one of
the main themes of social development: how to reduce wasting,
improve the efficiency of existing resources utilization and even
make the recycle of resource end endlessly. Therefore, Reduce,
Reuse and Recycle have been the three principles of circular
economy in the new century. The amount of garbage humans
throw away is rising fast and will not peak this century without
transformational changes in how we use and reuse materials. By
2100, they estimate, the growing global urban population will be
producing three times as much waste as it does today. That level of
waste carries serious consequences for cities around the world. In
the earlier report, they warned that global solid waste generation
was on pace to increase 70 percent by 2025, rising from more than
3.5 million tons per day in 2010 to more than 6 million tons per day
by 2025. The waste from cities alone is already enough to fill a line
of trash trucks 5,000 kilometers long every day.
26
Fig. 1.1 - World production of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW), 2012*-2015
27
The world market for waste and recycling was worth $450 billion
in 2010. Extrapolating data from an extensive study by the ParisDauphiné University in France, it has been established that
unwanted stuff weighs each year some four billion tons of which
only 2.7 billion is collected. The rest pollutes and represents a
health hazard. The total volume recycled is roughly established
at one billion tons. The one billion richest of the world generate
1.4 kg per person per day, while the 2.4 billion poorest produce
0.6 kg waste per day. The USA and Australia top the list of waste
generators in the world. Turkey sends 97 percent of its waste to
landfill sites, whereas the Switzerland only disposes 0.5 percent
in or under the ground. Japan leads the world in incineration,
burning 74 percent of all waste, followed by Denmark, Sweden
and Switzerland with approximately 50 percent going up in
smoke. The largest recycling program is energy recovery, which
unfortunately leaves toxic waste behind. In Europe, this waste
treatment is good for 200 million tons annually. This includes 7.3
million tons of plastics, in addition to the 5 million tons that are
recycled. With 49 percent, Korea has the best recycling rate for
municipal waste. Italy and Spain score approximately 30 percent
Fig. 1.2 - A child eats breakfast in a garbage dump, where hundreds of people live and make a living
by recycling waste and making charcoal, in the Tondo section of Manila, Dec. 9, 2007. Photo by
Darren Whiteside/Reuters.
28
Fig. 1.3 - These boys navigate through heaps of rubbish on the streets of Santa Fe, Argentina. Photo
by Damir Sagolj/Reuters
Fig. 1.4 - These boys balance over a murky puddle in Kabul, Afghanistan. Photo by Andrew Biraj/
Reuters
29
Fig. 1.5 - Sana, a 5-year-old girl, plays on a cloth sling hanging from a signaling pole as smoke from
a garbage dump rises next to a railway track in Mumbai, India, in 2012. Photo by Vivek Prakash/
Reuters
while countries like Germany, Switzerland, Norway and Denmark
only recover between 15 and 17 percent. Hungary only recycles
1.1 percent according to the latest figures available, while the
Netherlands score a surprisingly poor 2.3 percent. After energy
recovery, composting is the second most widely applied recycling
practice representing 100 million tons worldwide each year. If we
were to include human waste, it could easily increase ten-fold,
while generating methane gas and replenish the top soil. Metal
scraps and paper have a better market value and therefore each
recycles 400 and 250 million tons respectively. These numbers
are official and part of the formal economy. The developing world
recycles informally and broadly, practices re-use. Recycling is an
economic necessity with the additional benefit of reducing the
load on landfills by 75 to 95 percent and providing some form of
livelihood. Cairo, the capital of Egypt has an estimated 40,000
persons involved in the informal recycling business. From 2002
onwards, the majority of raw material markets were faced with
30
shortages and price hikes. World economic growth and the takeoff of the Chinese economy have been at the root of this challenge
to respond to demand that ended two decades of the illusion of
abundance. At the same time, secondary markets for the recovery
and recycling of waste saw prices multiplied under the appetite
of China. The proportion of secondary markets for materials such
as paper and non-ferrous metals was by 2010 already larger than
the primary market based on forestry and mining. The worldwide
plastic production was 280 million tons in 2011 and production
levels are growing every year. Its haphazard disposal causes severe
environmental damage such as the creation of the Great Pacific
garbage patch. In order to solve this problem, the employment
of modern technologies and processes to reuse the waste plastic
as a cheap substrate is under research. The goal is to bring this
material from the waste stream back into the mainstream by
developing processes, which will create an economic demand for
them. One approach in the field involves the conversion of waste
plastics (like LDPE, PET, and HDPE) into paramagnetic, conducting
microspheres or into carbon nanomaterials by applying high
temperatures and chemical vapor deposition. On a molecular level,
the treatment of polymers like polypropylene or thermoplastics
with electron beams (doses around 150 kGy) can increase the
material properties like bending strength and elasticity and
provides an eco-friendly and sustainable way to upcycle them.
PET could be converted into the biodegradable PHA by using a
combination of temperature and microbial treatment. First it gets
pyrolized at 450 °C and the resulting terephthalic acid is used as
a substrate for microorganisms, which convert it finally into PHA.
Similar to the aforementioned approach is the combination of
nanomaterials like carbon nanotubes with powdered orange peel
as a composite material. This might be used to remove synthetic
dyes from wastewater. Biotechnology companies have recently
shifted focus towards the conversion of agricultural waste, or
biomass, to different chemicals or commodities. One company
in particular, BioTork, has signed an agreement with the State of
Hawaii and the USDA to convert the unmarketable papayas in
Hawaii into fish feed. As part of this Zero Waste Initiative put forth
by the State of Hawaii, BioTork will upcycle the otherwise wasted
biomass into a high quality, omega-rich fish feed.
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The concept of sustainable development is the compass of product
designing, experimental and commercial exploration, making an
important contribution to the global low-carbon development.
It is predicted that the primary resources will be decreasing
rapidly in 30 years later and half of the resources we need will
come from the recycling of solid waste. The industry of renewable
resource has numerous kinds. As the utilization of industrial waste
is constrained by the management system, market regulation,
industry concentration, pollution management, technology levels,
production efficiency, social participation and other aspects of the
industry in various countries, and they are not utilized fully and
effectively yet. In many countries, especially developing countries,
some of these resources are recycled and made into raw materials,
while more are treated as rubbish, which caused huge waste of
resources. Taking China “the world factory” for instance, at present,
some renewable resources are still not well developed and used
because of improper management and outdated technology. It is
reported that about 2 to 3 million tons of ferrous waste, 6 million
tons of waste paper, 2 million tons of cullet, 700 thousand tons of
waste plastic, 300 thousand tons of waste fibers, 300 thousand tons
of waste rubber and 4 thousand tons of fly ash are not recycled or
reused properly. Those raw materials that are in good quality can
just be downgraded to produce primary or low-level productions.
For example, when recycling copper base, aluminum base and
aluminum base alloy, they basically are melted down and refined
to produce pure metals and a large amount of metals are wasted.
China loses ten thousand tons of metals in ferrous waste every
year. Therefore, using and promoting renewable resources are
extremely urgent now, which is in close relation to the continuity of
humans life and production and will be the key to the sustainable
and stable development of national economy and human society.
The discipline of upcycle faces this great problem of the world
situation of waste as a plausible solution. The solutions that
begin to deal with this problem start at a local level, such as km0
production, which it is supported by the principle of diminishing
the cost of energy and reduce packaging and additional materials
for shipment. The second factor use to face this problem is use a
systemic approach to the process. Today upcycle more and more
seeks to become a process that can also be incorporated in a system
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Fig. 1.6 – Triangle that represents the scale of importance of waste disposal
of mass production.
1.3 Upcycle: the story and the method
Upcycling is the opposite of downcycling. Downcycling involves
converting converting valuable products into low-value raw
materials. For example: creating recycled papers from paper,
creating rags from clothing, Although downcycling helps the
planet because it keeps things out of landfills (for a time at least)
many times it will eventually end up there.
Downcycling is where you reclaim a material for reuse in a product
of lesser value or in some way compromise the integrity of the
material through the reclamation process; meaning it cannot be
used in making the original product. Downcycling is the process
of converting waste materials or useless products into new
materials or products of lesser quality and reduced functionality.
Downcycling aims to prevent wasting potentially useful materials,
reduce consumption of fresh raw materials, energy usage,
air pollution and water pollution. Its goals are also lowering
greenhouse gas emissions (though re-use of tainted toxic chemicals
for other purposes can have the opposite effect) as compared to
virgin production.
A clear example of downcycling is plastic recycling, which turns the
33
material into lower grade plastics. There are many do-it-yourself
downcycling crafting ideas for holidays, parties, and other events.
This is not only a way to recycle objects to reduce waste; people
create works of art out of downcycled materials as well. The term
downcycling was used by Reiner Pilz in an interview by Thornton
Kay of Salvo in 1994. We talked about the impending EU Demolition
Waste Streams directive. He despairs of the German situation and
recalls the supply of a large quantity of reclaimed woodblock from
an English supplier for a contract in Nuremberg while just down
the road a load of similar blocks was scrapped. It was a pinky
looking aggregate with pieces of handmade brick, old tiles and
discernible parts of useful old items mixed with crushed concrete.
Is this the future for Europe? The term downcycling was also used
by William McDonough and Michael Braungart in their 2002 book
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. As we have
noted, most recycling is actually downcycling; it reduces the quality
of a material over time. When plastics other than those found in
soda and water bottles are recycled, they are mixed with different
plastics to produce a hybrid of lower quality, which is then molded
into something amorphous and cheap, such as a park bench or
a speed bump... Aluminum is another valuable but constantly
downcycled material. The typical soda can consists of two kinds of
aluminum: the walls are composed of aluminum, manganese alloy
with some magnesium, plus coatings and paint, while the harder
top is aluminum magnesium alloy. In conventional recycling these
materials are melted together, resulting in a weaker and less useful
product. While downcycling is criticized for reducing the value of
a product, it is justified in terms of reducing the energy and CO2
emissions that would be entailed in producing products from
scratch with new raw materials.
Upcycling isn’t new. During the 1930s and ‘40s many families
suffered economically and had to be thrifty just to get by, as the
goods they required were hard to come by. Upcycling was common
place, converting old possessions into required resources. Today, in
many poor countries upcycling is a still day to day occurrence with
families creating clothes from food sacks, tables from old doors and
cups from tin cans. Upcycling is a way of adding value to waste. In
some cases recycling processes can achieve these aims; however,
energy and water savings can be made by avoiding reprocessing
34
materials to a virgin state. In many cases, recycling also results in
a downgrading of the material’s constructions. Remanufacturing
is a method of extending product lifecycles through reuse and
reconstruction of products in closed loop cycles the primary aim
of upcycling is to refashion and integrate discarded components
and materials into a new range of diverse products within openloop cycles.
“Upcycling” is new method of recycling that will not consume
energy is becoming more and more prevalent. Upcycling is based
on recycling and an upgraded one that will leave less carbon
footprints. To upcycle something is to take a used object and adapt
it in an innovative way to a new function. Unlike recycling, which
usually involves breaking down the material an object is made
from, before it is made into something else, upcycling involves
using something in a new way without doing anything to reprocess
the material it’s made from. As well as being more energy efficient,
another major benefit of upcycling is that it makes it possible to
reuse items made of materials, which could not be dealt with by
conventional recycling methods. When something is upcycled,
nothing, or very little, is discarded, with every component part or
material having a potential use. The spirit of upcycling is using the
raw material in a different way without changing it.
Therefore, when using these raw materials, designers often choose
to recombine them and make them into useful appliances or
beautiful artworks. Actually, even though it is in recent years that
the concept of upcycling enters the life of common people, many
artists and designers already did this before. Among them, the
most famous one is the sculpture of Bull’s Head by Picasso (1942)
and the birth of this sculpture had an interesting story. Picasso was
not only a famous painter with enormous creation but also fond of
collecting waste metals.
Picasso was not only a famous painter with enormous creation
but also fond of collecting waste metals. One day, he saw an old
man with an old and broken bicycle in the street. Suddenly, the
inspiration came and Picasso asked the old man to give him the
old bicycle. The old man thought that the bicycle was really worn
out and could not ride at all, so he agreed to give it to him without
hesitation. After bringing back the bicycle, Picasso knocked down
35
Fig. 1.7 - Pablo Picasso, 1942, Tête de taureau (Bull’s Head), Bicycle seat and handlebars, 33.5 x 43.5
x 19 cm, Musée Picasso, Paris
the handlebars and saddles and combined them into a head of
a bull. The sculpture was an innovation in the history of art and
became the representative work of “ready make”. From then on,
numerous artists followed the steps of Picasso to use finished
products to make sculptures.
Sustainable development is advocated in four core fields:
environment, economy, people’s livelihood and the continuity
and diversity of culture. Thus, in recent years, as sustainable
development is accepted by more and more people, works of
upcycling are emerging, which show the diversity of creativity and
design concept in modern society.
Human’s spiritual and cultural life is enriched in the promotion
of environmental-friendly products and low-carbon life. Here we
have some upcycling works of two groups of designers. Every
36
product is made by a variety of energy consumption. In view of
energy consumption, the more complicated a product structure
is, the more energy will be consumed; the more parts a product
has and more complex the process is, the more energy will be
used. Industrial waste materials are just what upcycling needs.
They will not be crushed or melted but made into new products in
their original forms and shapes by using our inspiration. It means
that to endow the waste with new function through innovation,
combination and redesigning so that their life can last. Usually,
“upcycling” begins from designing. Designers transform the old
items by inspiration to enable them to have new functions. There
is not energy consumption in upcycling and each part has its own
potential uses, so little or no material will be discarded. Comparing
with producing new products, upcycling can save energy by 60
% and materials by 70% and decrease air pollutants emission by
more than 80%, which is significant to energy conservation and
emission reduction. Through upcycling the value of the old items
is increased because they are environmental-friendly, low-carbon
and have intellectual property rights. The value is a reflection of
people’s seeking for environmental protection and low-carbon
and also enriches people’s role is environmental protection as well
as the connotation of thrift of recycling economy. On top of the
market value, a good piece of upcycle work hides and bears many
meanings, such as innovation, inheritance of techniques and social
harmony.
Upcycling already exists as a post-production process in certain
industry niches. Companies such as Terracycle and Freitag are
exemplars of the practice, having established manufacturing
businesses around the reuse of waste in products that re-enter
consumer cycles. Terracycle, a multi-million dollar enterprise in the
US, began by producing “worm poop” fertilizer which is packaged
in reused PET drink bottles. They have since developed a whole
range of products, including pencil cases and tote bags made from
food and drink packaging, flower pots from e-waste, and wall-clocks
from discarded records (Szarky 2009). Freitag (2011) similarly make
a number of ranges of courier bags, handbags and wallets from
truck tarpaulins, bike inner tubes and car seatbelts, Transforming
used truck tarps into highly functional, unique bags takes place in
five highly complex stages at the F-actory. Lumenlab (2008) retails
37
kits for DIY digital data projectors where the primary component
is a reused LCD monitor. These examples, however, demonstrate
upcycling as a post-production process, where alternative ways to
responsibly reuse existing EoL products are sought at the point of
that product’s EoL.
While the project outlined below operated within this realm,
further research aims to develop upstream methods for designing
products to be upcycled. By building on lessons learned, it is
expected that this would help reduce landfill, open new business
opportunities for recovering and reusing waste, and encourage
greater product variability. Before the Industrial Revolution, when
new technologies made it more cost-effective to create new things
rather than reuse them, upcycling was a fact of life. Fabrics were
separated into fibers like wool and cotton, broken down again and
spun into new products. Henry Ford even practiced an early form
of upcycling, using the crates car parts were shipped in as vehicle
floorboards. After Henry Ford the first man that start to speak
about the up-cycle topic was Gunter Pauli. Gunter Pauli is call also
“the Steve Jobs of Sustainability”. “Nature does not know the concept
of waste; the only species capable of making something no one desires
is the human species.” (Gunter Pauli, The Blue Economy; Paradigm
Publications 2010.) Gunter Pauli in Zero Emissions Research and
Initiatives
In the following pages, I want explain three different tools and
pillars of Up-cycle and sustainability design:
1. The blue economy: is a portfolio of business innovations
that people and companies can use such a good examples to
follow, and also in this chapter will be an examples of upcycle
company grew on the shoulders of blue economy method.
2. ZERI, Zero Emissions Research & Initiatives: is network to view
waste as resource and seek solutions using nature’s design
principles as inspiration, in which the most important thing is
the keyword community like a place where share knowledge
and tools to face the problems and find a innovative and
sustainable solutions.
38
3. Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. They
state that the goal of upcycling is to prevent wasting potentially
useful materials by making use of existing ones. Moreover
through their book create a method how to define if the project
is sustainable or not.
1.4 First pillar: spread a sustainable business
If we want to talk about upcycle one of the most important book
is the Blue Economy write by Gunter Pauli that is considered the
bible of this new economy, meant of all us who are working to build
a better world.
The Blue Economy is a portfolio of innovations that go beyond
the technology. It introduces a series of competitive business
models creating practical solutions. From an environmental
perspective, the elimination of waste represents the ultimate
solution to pollution problems that threaten ecosystems at both
local and global levels. For industry, Blue Economy means greater
competitiveness and represents a continuation of its inevitable
drive towards ever more efficiency. For governments, the full use of
raw materials creates new industries and generates jobs even as it
raises productivity. Moreover, it provides the means to feed, clothe
and house their populations without destroying the ability of future
generations to do the same. The Blue Economy is scaling several
dozen projects worldwide. It is inspired and aided by a number
of leading scientists, spread across a hundred countries. They
making their vision, knowledge and available services. Together
with pioneering research inspired by our desire to do more with
what we have. And more, it permits to offer the best products for
your health and the environment at lower cost, breaking with the
accepted tradition that the best should be the most expensive.
The Blue Economy goes beyond the Green Economy. The present
employment crisis, especially amongst the young does not permit
us to pursue a business model that aims to cut costs by cutting
employment, a model that offers the best for everyone’s health
and the environment as the most expensive. Time has come to shift
39
towards a competitive business model that allows producers to
offer the best at the lowest prices by introducing innovations that
generate multiple benefits, not just increased profits. Professor
Gunter Pauli when asked by the United Nations to reflect on the
business models of the future first introduced this economic
philosophy in 1994. Now, substantiated by over 180 concrete cases,
it is increasingly clear that it is possible to generate more revenue,
while generating more jobs and still compete on the global market.
The key to this dramatic shift is to evolve from a core business
based on a core competence to a portfolio of businesses that
generate multiple benefits for business and society. As long as
corporate executives wish to pursue economies of scale, based on
standardized products, secured worldwide through just-in-time
deliveries and outsourcing where labor productivity is the key to
success, jobless rate will continue to soar. However, if companies
evolve towards the full use of all its available resources, clusters
activities and cascades to higher levels of efficiency, then a new
model emerges. A coffee company can generate income from
the coffee, its core business, and now can generate revenue
from the mushrooms farmed on the waste, and whatever is left
over after harvesting the protein rich fungi is excellent animal
feed. One revenue model is now transformed in a three revenue
model. Companies have focused excessively on cutting costs and
therefore pursued a global strategy looking for the cheapest and
most flexible place of manufacturing or service delivery. However,
the drive towards ever-cheaper products has resulted in an
increased deprivation of cash in local economies, which have less
employment but also less purchasing power, thus leading to less
money circulating in the communities. This results in an economic
contraction as is being experienced in numerous economies, not
the least in Spain and Greece countries that suffered also from
excessive government expenditure.
For understand better the application of blue economy to the
real case I want to present a case study of Antonia Edwards,
that applied the blue economy concept for create an innovative
upcycle project. From the point of view of economic theory,
waste is a negative externality outside the market. Regulation is
trying to correct this by internalizing post-production and post
40
consumption costs. However, the price setting remains a political
decision through the introduction of taxes which influence the
price, or emission standards which impact on the quantity. In this
way, waste is given a value and the externality has now a price. It
is widely agreed amongst policy makers and economists that the
emergence of genuinely worldwide markets for scrap and paper
mirror the development for steel and paper pulp in high demand
especially in countries that lack supplies like China and Turkey.
The challenge remains how to generate more value without the
need of heavy taxation which is indiscriminately passed on to the
consumer while offering higher quality at a competitive price.
Antonia Edwards graduated from the University of Brighton with
a master degree in interior design, after studying art history at the
University College of London. She started her career as an interiors
and fashion editor. When a creative friend of hers starting painting
illustrations on old discarded chairs and tables she was stunned
with the unique result. With a bit of research, Antonia realized
that the concept of converting something old and unwanted into
something beautiful is a problem that creatives love to solve. She
feels that when one works within the parameters of prescribed
materials it can spark imagination and creativity that would
not necessarily arise when starting a project from scratch with
materials coming from anywhere as we wish. Using what you have
is one of the core principles of The Blue Economy.
Antonia started an online magazine and adopted the name “The
Upcyclist”. Since she had a broad experience with online publishing
she started reporting over the internet on all things upcycled and
stylish. The website quickly converted into a resource for both
creatives and consumers, inspiring people to make something
from recycled material, add functionality and beauty, and also
buy and sell the product. Antonia differentiates herself from many
other initiatives that report and support innovative reuse. She
carefully selects the products with quality and style that could
command a premium on the market. She positions her blog as
the resource platform for the beautiful and innovative reuse of
unwanted, unloved materials and objects from around the globe.
Instead of the bulk reprocessing of standardized goods, she reports
41
on restoring, reclaiming, reviving, remaking, repurposing, reusing
and re-loving. Antonia went on the create “upcyclisted” with
materials offered and wanted, particularly for artistic projects.
In less than 2 years she has featured 12 cases of architecture, 54
designers of fashion, 27 makers of furniture, 24 makers of jewelry,
10 manufacturers of lighting, 8 upcyclers of glass, and 15 small
businesses working with wood. Antonia created in a couple years
a platform for entrepreneurs who meet her high standards in 38
countries. In 2011 alone, Antonia reported on 178 entrepreneurial
businesses.
Antonia has expanded to textiles, metals, sculptures, installations,
plastics and paper products identifying people and start-up
companies who master the process to convert waste into quality
products with a higher environmental value. Antonia is making an
effort for people to take notice of the history in each object and to
move away from shiny and mass produced consumables. This is
giving rise to a new breed of creativity, while it offers a fresh way to
perceive items we already own. Starting as an individual, reporting
on single initiatives, Antonia is taking a second remarkable step,
to network and compile specific opportunities under one single
report like “The Shirt off his Back” by Juliet Bawden, covering
30 projects for transforming everyday end-of-life shirts into a
range of home accessories like duvet and chair covers or light
dimmers. The examples that Antonia features inspire many to
enroll in the upcycling trend like Freddie Saul, whose father is
the founder of the famous British fashion brand Mulberry. He
worked on documenting the “Upcycled Furniture Collection”
which is now stocked in prestigious London stores. All furniture
is handmade from upcycled materials including reclaimed wood
from ballroom floors. Freddie designs and manufactures now with
a team in Somerset (UK). South Africa, and Cape Town in particular
has developed a whole upcycling industry and while this has
generated thousands of jobs, there is one designer who has now
reached the heights of interior design. Katie Thompson transforms
the ordinary into the extraordinary by repurposing broken and
unwanted furniture. She set up the company recreate with a range
of furniture lighting with tapestry print, accessories like a suitcase
chair, milk bottle or typewriter lamps. Antonia operates like the
Blue Economy community, creating a platform that inspires others
42
to do more and better. She applies the open source principles and
has the ingenuity to add beauty and style to her presentations that
is likely to change the perception of anything unwanted forever
while giving sense and purpose not only to our material world, but
also to our professions and life style.
1.5 Second pillar: community as an inspiration
Zero Emissions Research & Initiatives (ZERI) is a global network of
creative minds seeking solutions to world challenges. The common
vision shared by the members of the ZERI family is to view waste
as resource and seek solutions using nature’s design principles
as inspiration. They believe that time has come to go beyond the
green economy, where renewable energy cannot compete without
subsidies, and whatever is good for our health and the environment
costs more. Time has come to respond to the basic needs of all with
what they have, introducing innovations that change the business
model to the point that the best is cheap and the necessary for life
is free - just like the commons used to be.
ZERI shows how the concept of community and the education of
the masses to the responsibilities to the environment becomes
a point of union among different actors in the development of
innovative projects.
The ZERI Foundation serves as an antenna in the world economy
identifying the innovations benchmarked somewhere, spotting
early on the high growth industries of the next decade. When there
is a crisis, many businesses suffer, but some thrive.
Which are the ones that are the job providers of the future? Which
are the technologies that will change life for the better?
With representations on four continents, with over 50 projects that
have demonstrated over the past 15 years where the opportunities
are, ZERI offers insights to government on which sectors to attract,
to companies which market niches to focus on, and to communities
how to secure the continued build-up of social capital. On April
6, 1994 Gunter Pauli arrived in Tokyo at the invitation of Heitor
43
Gurgulino de Souza, then Rector of the United Nations University
who with the support of the Japanese Government decided to
create a think tank which was to imagine a competitive business
model in a world guided by the Kyoto Protocol. Twenty years later,
the philosophy of zero emissions, where waste is converted to
revenues, and unused yet widely available resources are cascading
into a chain of value generation, can look back at nearly 200
implemented projects, the generation of €4 billion in investments
and an impact as a concept that created to an estimated 3 million
jobs. The most widely copied project is the farming of mushrooms
on coffee (+1,000), the most advanced is the bio refinery with the
inauguration of the first and second phase in Porto Torres, Italy
in a few months. Today, the Blue Economy, the philosophy in
action, maintains its global network of some 3,000 scholars and
scientists as part of its Think Tank, ready to contribute ad hoc to
initiatives anywhere in the world that are spearheaded by about
900 implementers who are part of the Do Tank. Gunter Pauli, as
founder and animator of the initiatives, is committed to continue
to find more opportunities, looking resolutely forward, focusing
on the implementation of initiatives that carry the broadest
possible stakeholders’ support. Moving from the regeneration of
the rainforest in the savannas of Latin America where trees stood
tall 200 years ago, to the regeneration of 100 million corals around
the Caribbean island of Bonaire, the ZERI network is in a constant
quest to change the rules of the game, bringing more benefits to
people and nature with local resources. In the course of the next
few weeks, we will publish a new manifesto outlining the strategies
for the decade ahead which include fast track implementation of
initiatives after the scanning and screening for opportunities and
the widespread distribution of the 365 fables (of which 190 are
ready) which were launched in China in April 2014. The members
of ZERI take on challenges, other will consider impossible or too
complex. Starting from ideas, based on science, the common vision
shared by each and every member of the ZERI network is to seek
sustainable solutions for society, from unreached communities
to corporations inspired by nature’s design principles. Innovative
solutions are constantly designed by the ZERI teams drawn from
many walks of life and expertise. ZERI is contributing towards
the creation of a global consciousness rooted in the search for
practical solutions based on sustainable natural systems. The
44
search for sustainability must be based on the acceptance of the
interconnectedness of local and global issues. Unless we see the
connections from the microscopic cellular scale to the supra
global, each affecting the other in subtle yet profound ways, it is
impossible to search for appropriate solutions.
ZERI believes in working with many problems simultaneously. This
approach not only facilitates the synergy of multiple solutions, but
also requires different organizational approaches. Institutions are
challenged to think ‘out of the box,’ facilitating inter-departmental
operations. Moreover, our solutions are constantly evolving,
continually shaped by changing contexts. This approach brings
real transformation, often in unexpected and very positive ways.
ZERI Sustainable solutions must be based on what is locally
available. ZERI believes in building on local expertise and culture
within the local ecosystem with what is available. ZERI respects
the need for quick results. The needs of the marginalized majority
are urgent, the window of opportunity to redress a stressed
business opportunity are immediate. They cannot wait while
poverty alleviation programmers are constantly being redesigned,
yet unable to deliver. They cannot wait for banks to foreclose, or
shareholders to change management. ZERI believes in challenging
the dominant mind set rooted in the scarcity principle and poverty
consciousness. A narrow technological approach to addressing
poverty issues in an open market is unlikely to be successful.
Instead, communities (from society or from business) need to be
enabled to work with nature’s design principles being able to value
their own richness and of their environment; communities need to
experience projects that demonstrate that wealth of opportunities
working with true diversity can generate livelihood for all. Business
must first and foremost respect the license under which it is granted
a right to operate: respond to the needs of the client. Government
is not exempt from this golden rule: respond to the needs of the tax
payer and the needy in the community.
ZERI believes in building a new kind of leadership. Current notions
of leadership are based on power and control. Going beyond this
means focusing on creating a future generation, working with young
minds believing in “impossible dreams.” Stimulating creativity and
innovation, ZERI believes in affirming the creative potential of each
45
individual and their unique contribution towards the development
of themselves and their communities. True diversity thus allows
each one to appreciate her or his uniqueness while celebrating the
inter-connectedness of all. Making sense of this interconnectedness,
with the backing of scientific knowledge, paves the way for real
development to take place within the community, eco-system
and the broader living environment. It is an environment where
entrepreneurship thrives, and where productivity increases
while jobs are generated. It is Upsizing, instead of the dreadful
Downsizing. From an environmental perspective, the elimination
of waste represents the ultimate solution to pollution problems that
threaten ecosystems at both local and global levels. In addition, full
use of raw materials, accompanied by a shift towards renewable
sources, means that utilization of the earth’s resources can be
brought back to sustainable levels. For industry, Zero Emissions
means greater competitiveness and represents a continuation of
its inevitable drive towards efficiency. First came productivity of
labor and capital, and now comes the complete use of raw materials
-producing more from less. Zero Emissions can therefore be viewed
as a standard of efficiency, much like Total Quality Management
(zero defects) and Just In Time (zero inventory). For governments,
the full use of raw materials creates new industries and generates
jobs even as it raises productivity. Moreover, it provides the means
to feed, clothe and house their populations without destroying
the ability of future generations to do the same. One of the most
important issues with respect to upcycle regards the education of
designers in the creative reuse of waste materials without leading
the need for raw materials. ZERI in this case looks like a perfect
case study of a community from around the world to design while
maintaining a sustainable behavior.
1.6 Third pillar: less bad is not good
Every day, people everywhere churn out mountains of plastic and
non-biodegradable waste, which threaten to eclipse our living
spaces. At one point in time, people all over the world simply
threw their “waste” onto the ground where it was reabsorbed into
the earth. The idea of waste as we know it today was a completely
46
foreign concept. Modern attitudes around waste and our general
lack of awareness about the amount and types of trash we produce
indicate the desperate need for an innovative new approach to this
issue. Upcycling, the practice of converting waste materials into
products of greater value, is a philosophy that transforms the way
we conceive of waste. Upcycling is not just a solution to a problem,
but a new method of thinking about and working with an asset,
formerly known as garbage, which is already present in abundance
in our communities.
The German edition of the book was adapted to the German
language and culture by Johannes F. Hartkemeyer, then Director
of the Volkshochschule in Osnabruck. The concept was later
incorporated by William McDonough and Michael Braungart in
their 2002 book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make
Things. They state that the goal of upcycling is to prevent wasting
potentially useful materials by making use of existing ones. This
reduces the consumption of new raw materials when creating new
products. Reducing the use of new raw materials can result in a
reduction of energy usage, air pollution, water pollution and even
greenhouse gas emissions.
For example, during the recycling process of plastics other than
those used to create bottles, many different types of plastics
are mixed, resulting in a hybrid. This hybrid is used in the
manufacturing of plastic lumber applications. However, unlike
the engineered polymer ABS which hold properties of several
plastics well, recycled plastics suffer phase-separation that causes
structural weakness in the final product.
In developing countries, where new raw materials are often
expensive, upcycling is commonly practiced, largely due to
impoverished conditions.
Upcycling has seen an increase in use due to its current marketability
and the lowered cost of reused materials. In habitat, a blog devoted
to sustainability and design, holds an annual upcycling design
competition with entries coming from around the globe.
Over the last decade, the term “Upcycling” has been coined and
worked into the discourse of sustainability efforts. It appeared in
William McDonough’s book, Cradle to Cradle. It has yet to earn
47
itself mainstream popularity, but its necessity as a goal for how
we should be progressing makes its definition important. Like so
many things in sustainability, I come across many enthusiasts who
are trying to promote the practice but may be passing around an
incorrect meaning.
We all know what the basis of Recycling is: a practice that takes an
item and targets it for reuse, returning it back to the cycle of daily
contribution to society rather than discarding it to trash.
Going to the dictionary for confirmation renders the following:
•
to treat or process (used or waste materials) so as to make
suitable for reuse: recycling paper to save trees
•
to alter or adapt for new use without changing the essential
form or nature of: The old factory is being recycled as a theater
•
to use again in the original form or with minimal alteration:
The governor recycled some speeches from his early days
•
to cause to pass through a cycle again: to recycle laundry
through a washing machine
The Cradle to Cradle CertifiedCM program is a third party, multiattribute eco-label administered by the Cradle to Cradle Products
Innovation Institute that assesses a product’s safety to humans and
the environment and design for future life cycles. The program
provides guidelines to help businesses implement the Cradle to
Cradle framework, which focuses on using safe materials that can
be disassembled and recycled as technical nutrients or composted
as biological nutrients. Unlike single-attribute eco-labels, the Cradle
to Cradle Certified program takes a comprehensive approach to
evaluating the design of a product and the practices employed
in manufacturing the product. The materials and manufacturing
practices of each product are assessed in five categories: Material
Health, Material Reutilization, Renewable Energy Use, Water
Stewardship, and Social Responsibility.
The Cradle to Cradle Certified program was founded in 2005 by
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McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC). In 2010, William
McDonough and Dr. Michael Braungart formed the non-profit
Institute to manage and administer the certification program as
an independent third-party organization. MBDC bestowed an
exclusive license upon the institute for the product certification
mark and methodology. MBDC is the leading service provider for
the certification program and partners with product manufacturers
to complete the certification process. Learn more about consulting
with MBDC to certify your product. Products or materials from any
industry or country are eligible to apply for certification.
Since the program began in 2005, more than 150 companies
from over 15 countries have participated in the Cradle to Cradle
CertifiedCM program. Currently there are over 425 certified
products, which include building materials, interior design
products, textiles and fabrics, paper and packaging, and personal
and homecare products. Participating companies include United
States Postal Service, Shaw Industries, Herman Miller, Steelcase,
and Method. Products or materials from any industry that are sold
to consumers or other businesses are eligible for certification.
Certification criteria are the same for all product types.
What we understood by this third pillar is in order to implement
an upcycle process must follow the rules that determine the good
design of the new product.
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2
51
APPROACH
AND METHODS:
PRODUCT SERICE
SYSTEM DESIGN
AS A MAIN
DRIVER FOR
THE PROJECT
AND RESEARCH
DEVELOPMENT
2.1 Product service system design approach
Since my Italian university background, I uses the Product
Service System Design approach in the design process. In the
following pages I will show the three distinct phases in which I
highlighted four basic methods for each stage in the development
of the project. The Inspiration phase in the thesis is referring
to the research part and concern all the materials that I found
thanks to both desk/online research and the on field research. In
this chapter I learn from my stake holders for discover who are
52
them, which are their needs, and give a panoramic overview about
upcycle technique and the design methods, using the case studies
and personal experience that I have done during my university
studies.According to the needs that I discovers in the inspiration
Fig. 2.1 - Three models representing the Design process.
chapter, the second phase is about the project, that means the
most important thing is generate ideas for solve the problem and
the needs of my stakeholders. From August to November, I grasp
the issue and potentials solution for this thesis, and for defined
the concept I use different tools. When I identify the goal and the
audients a start to create a core message, like a story where I tell
something relevant and new about the topic that I choose, after
I create a message for engage other people in the project I use a
design tool to start to build the roots of the concept. The most
important tool in this phase was the co-design session made with
other designer for understand the key point of the project and for
face the problem of the missing competitors. The last part will be
the Implementation phase that I also call Design phase in which I
will shows the prototyping phase and the feedback. But first of all
I will give a definition of what it means to so PSSD and what is it.
Different studios call it by different names (Design Council calls it
Double Diamond, IDEO calls it the Five Step Method, some others
call it Funnel, etc.), but the core processes and approach are the
same and if we section the whole design workflow into 3 different
points, this is what we find.
•
Phase 1: the concept generation. This is the home of tools, like
brainstorming and post-it boards, which help the team discuss
53
the project at a very early stage. The output here is a great
amount of sketches, notes, and ideas, which usually flow into a
concept. In this phase, creative contamination occurs, and it is
probably the most open and collaborative phase.
•
Phase 2: the concept definition. Once the main direction is
settled, further activities need to happen to figure out the
specifications, the styles, and the feasibility of the project. These
kinds of activities are usually better conducted in a structured
and specialized team with a minor level of open collaboration.
•
Phase 3: the delivery. This phase is the most operative; the
concept is developed into a real product primarily through
the use of technical skills. The work is divided into tasks and
assigned.
2.2 Emphatize and finalize the research
The tools that I used in the inspiration phase: plan the work;
observation; learning from expert; learning from people; analogous
inspiration; frame design challenge; immersion in the field to
create a personal experience; desk research. Inspiration phase in
the thesis is referring to the research part. Indeed is about learning
on the fly, opening myself up to creative possibilities, and trusting
that as long as I remain grounded in desires of the communities
I am engaging, my ideas will evolve into the right solutions. I get
smart on my challenge, and talk to a staggering variety of people.
The most important questions in this phase: How do I keep people
at the center of my research? What tools can I use to understand
people? How do I conduct an interview? In addition, the last is How
do I get started the project? These are questions introduce the tools
that I used in Research phase. For identification of upcycle contest
and define the typology of the people that I need to interview.
Therefore, in the chapter about research I defined the base and
root of thesis. In this chapter, the most important thing will be
create the base and the roots for the generation of ideas.
2.3 Ideation and definition of the idea
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The second phase is about the project. For this thesis was from
August to November in which I use different tools to defined the
concept. The first action that I have done was define the user and
the stakeholders, first I build some hypothesis and thanks the
interview and observations in the field I define the boundaries for
the persona. For each persona, I defined the profile, the behaviors
and the needs. The most important tool in this phase was the codesign session made with other designer for understand the key
point of the project. Co-design is an approach to design attempting
actively involve all stakeholders in the design process to help
ensure the result meets their needs and is usable, in my case the
stakeholders are the designer. In the end the tools that I used in
this phase: insight statements; what if question; brainstorming;
concept definition; storyboard; Co-design session; maps type; pilot
prototype and the normal prototype and the output will be the
testing phase and the feedbacks from it. In the Ideation phase, I will
hare what I have learned, make sense of a vast amount of data, and
identify opportunities for design. I will generate many ideas during
the co-design session, some of which I will keep, and others which
I will discard. I will get tangible by building rough prototypes of my
ideas, then I will share them with the people from whom I have
learned and get their feedback.
2.4 Fix the design parameter
In the Implementation phase is defined design part. Design
because is the part in which I explain the detail of the project and
the two typology of prototyping. The tools that I used: re-frame; get
feedback; business model canvas; create guidelines. In the end, the
outcome will be the cards tool-kit. The implementation chapter
is based on the concept that I defined in the previous phase. I
used prototyping tool for testing the graphic and the esthetic
part of the project. I used a structural system, coming from the
interaction design field and the advertisement, called Information
Architecture, which refers to the organization of the contents in
a website, in order to be read easier by the user. Another tool will
be the pilot prototype in which I will prototype the functions of
project.
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3
57
RESEARCH:
ANALYSIS OF THE
UPCYCLE FIELD
AND DESIGN
3.1 Current body of literature about
upcycle
Before delving into the different contexts in which upcycle is
developing I would stress that a dozen years ago to this day the
upcycle has become more and more popular.
Upcycle is often considered as a process in which waste materials
are converted into something of higher value and/or quality in
their second life. It has been increasingly recognized as a promising
means to reduce material and energy use. For example, Braungart
and McDonough pioneers of industrial upcycling in Cradle to
Cradle, have advocated radical innovations for perpetually circular
material reutilization as opposed to current recycling practice, and
helped a number of companies to incorporate upcycling in their
businesses (Steelcase, Herman Miller, Ford). Szaky sees object
upcycling as one of the most sustainable circular solutions since
upcycling typically requires little energy input and can eliminate
the need for a new product from virgin materials. Such object level
upcycling has been actively promoted and practiced by increasing
number of entrepreneurs including TerraCycle, FREITAG,
Reclaimed, The Upcycling Trading Company and Hipcycle to name
a few.
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•
The growing number of publications on upcycling in various
subject areas also shows that the concept of upcycling has
received more attention from numerous business practitioners,
researchers, and craft professionals and hobbyists in recent
years. According to the Google Books search done by the
author in September, 2014, upcycling related books have been
published since 1999.
•
Most books (96%; 115 out of 120 books) in the sample were
published between 2008 and 2014 with higher publication
rate between 2012 and 2014 as 62.5% of all samples (75 books
between 2012 and 2014; 21 books in 2012; 28 in 2013; and 26
in 2014). 53% (64/120) of the sampled books are categorized as
“craft and hobbies” whereas the other book categories show
similar percentages (art & design: 10%; house & home DIY: 10%;
science & technology: 9%; business & economics: 8%; and the
rest as miscellaneous).
•
The theses search on Google Scholar simultaneously conducted
by the author showed a similar recent surge of publication:
90% (37/41) of these in the sample (since 2001) were published
between 2009 and 2014.
Fig. 3.1 - Cumulative frequency of the number of the sampled publications about Upcycle
59
•
Subject areas in them include architecture, art, business &
management, design engineering, engineering, environmental
study, textiles & clothing, among others.
Despite the rising interest in upcycling manifested by industrial
interest along with increased publication levels, surprisingly, no
major academic review has yet been presented to my knowledge.
This might be partially attributed to the fact that the term, upcycling,
is a neologism. The first recorded use of the term has been traced
back to an interview with Reiner Pilz. For this reason, the overall
volume of literature dealing with upcycling is still low. Therefore,
in order to further establish this field, this paper analyses and
summarizes the current body of literature on upcycling, focusing
on different definitions, trends in practices, benefits, drawbacks
and barriers in a number of subject areas.
3.2 Four types of upcycle context
What are the protagonists of the scene of the upcycle? Which
situation is emerging in the world today? These are the main
questions that I asked myself before start to write this chapter.
The situation of upcycle today provides different results according
to different fields. In particular, I would like to analyze four main
categories that I create to highlight how upcycle is developing in
the world.
The first are the big companies and brands that have become aware
of how mass production undertaken by them has a negative impact
on the future and then seek upcycle solutions for future products
even banning of the ideas competition as it did recently H&M. The
most important concept behind this cluster is the business model,
how to create profit reusing waste material spending less energies.
The second category concern the major companies born with the
vision and the mission of making upcycle. Their business is based
on the waste recovery.
The third does not provide an analysis of companies but a
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phenomenon, a trend that began to enter homes and move the
people in an individual way and this phenomenon had historical
roots. Since prehistoric times, and especially in the most difficult
situations such as the crisis, we saw men and women driven by
practical needs seek innovative solutions with what they had.
Consider life during the Great Depression. Industrious housewives
re-used and repurposed as much as they could. Old dresses were
fashioned into aprons. Left over food was turned into tomorrow’s
lunch or composted into a natural garden fertilizer.
Finally, the last category came from my personal experience. The
university as a place of sustainable design for communities and
specific contexts can be done in an innovative way.
I start to talk about the International company and make an
overview about what happen in the world. The fashion industry
often gets slammed in sustainability circles. Dyeing and finishing
fabric involves using copious amounts of chemicals, steam and
Fig. 3.2 - Loopworks label of second skin of pc.
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water, leaving behind an enormous environmental footprint.
Then there are the labor issues, such as poor and unsafe working
conditions in places where laborers are paid a pittance for long
days of toil. However, the tide may be changing, at least on a few
important levels.
If Etsy could be use like an indicator, people really dig repurposing
things. More than 260,000 “upcycled” products, items such as
earrings made from watch parts or belts concocted from soda
can tabs, are for sale on the handmade e-commerce platform.
Companies are upcycling as well. Looptworks, an Oregon startup
that takes issue with the apparel industry’s waste, captures
abandoned materials from textile cutting room floors and turns
them into fashion-forward T-shirts, laptop sleeves and more. Its
mission is to reduce the million tons of fabric sent to landfills each
Fig. 3.3 - H&M campaign for old clothes.
year and slash the more than 400 gallons of fresh water needed to
produce one cotton T-shirt. That has not to put down regular old
recycling. Similar to what the North Face has done with its Clothes
the Loop program, Swedish retailer Hennes & Mauritz is rolling
out a new plan that offers discounts on new H&M merchandise to
people who bring their old clothes of any brand or condition to its
stores.
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The company resells clothing that is still wearable, offsetting some
of what it loses in discounts. Textiles that no longer can be worn are
converted into compost or new products, such as cleaning cloths
or automotive insulation. The program began in February 2014 and
rolled out to all H&M stores by the end of the year. Puma’s classic
T7 Track Jacket Puma has created a high performing polyester
zipper to replace the metal one in its classic T7 track jacket, which
is made of recycled polyester. Now when consumers are done
with the jacket and bring it back to a Puma store, the whole thing
can be recycled together. Puma’s industrial composting initiative
also is impressive. It’s now making a basket shoe that uses cotton
thread, which is tough to find from suppliers, instead of polyester
thread. Consumers can bring worn-out shoes back to a Puma
store. The company will ship them to a facility to be shredded and
decomposed by microorganisms. The resulting methane is used to
generate energy.
“Bring Me Back” was recently launched by popular sportswear
brand PUMA and aims at upcycling unwanted items to create new
products. PUMA is dedicated to making a smaller impact on earth.
The Bring Me Back program is one way of doing that.
“We’re taking what would normally be trash, and breathing new
life into your old sneakers, used t-shirts, and last season’s tote. By
taking old clothes and re-using, re-cycling, or re-purposing them,
we mitigate the amount of virgin material that would otherwise be
used to make new products. This partnership with I-Collect creates
a closed-loop system that diverts product from the landfill, and
becomes a new product.” The program also includes a fun social
element where you take a photo of your donated or upcycled item,
write a short obituary about it and post it on Puma’s Bring Me Back
site.
In the world there are also big realities that have made their mission
and therefore their business face the upcycle. In the following
pages, I will speak of the companies who make and support the
trend of upcycle. Here are five companies with upcycling ideas that
are here to stay.
Tom Szaky by 20 year old in 2001, turning worm poop into fertilizer
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was TerraCycle’s first big idea. Then they transformed discarded
drink containers into consumer bling, which made them a worldrecognized leader in this hot, new trend of “upcycling.” Upcycling
is the conversion of waste destined for landfills into new products
of better quality or a higher environmental value. TerraCycle
upcycles unwanted trash into messenger bags, notebooks, and
the list goes on. “Buy low, sell high” is the underlying business
model for upcycling companies such as TerraCycle. They buy raw
source materials (waste) at low cost and charge premium prices
for their fashionable, environmentally friendly upcycled products.
But that’s not all. The upcycling companies’ business partners
also benefit because their scrap waste is being reused. Instead
of having to pay someone to haul their waste away, someone
is actually paying for it and taking it off their hands. The good
news for the environment is that as more trash is upcycled, less
trash is ending up in landfills. It also lowers the consumption of
raw materials, air pollution from waste incineration, and water
pollution from leaking into landfills. The upcycling trend is doing
something more it is raising people’s awareness about the growing
trash problem and motivating them to change their behavior.
TerraCycle is now one of the fastest-growing green companies in
the world. The company creates waste collection programs for
waste that is impossible or difficult to recycle. TerraCycle converts
the waste into new products, such as park benches or backpacks.
Since the inauspicious start, TerraCycle has become one of the
fastest growing green companies in the world. More than just a
recycling company, TerraCycle strives to be a driving force behind
increasing environmental awareness and action. Their goal is to
be a trusted resource for families, schools, communities, and even
corporations to find tips, stats, facts, tactics, and news to help them
live a greener, cleaner lifestyle. Together, they are eliminating the
idea of waste. Today,
TerraCycle is a highly awarded, international upcycling and
recycling company that collects difficult to recycle packaging and
products and repurposes the material into affordable, innovative
products. TerraCycle is widely considered the world’s leader in
the collection and reuse of non-recyclable, post-consumer waste.
TerraCycle works with more than 100 major brands in the U.S.
and 22 countries overseas to collect used packaging and products
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Fig. 3.4 - Terracycle process and products
that would otherwise be destined for landfills. It repurposes
that waste into new, innovative materials and products that are
available online and through major retailers. Another company
is Recyclebank, an online portal that rewards users with local
deals and discounts for their green deeds, and all it takes is
answering a few quiz questions, recycling at home or sharing the
site with friends to win. All you got to do is register to get started.
Recyclebank is a company based in New York City that aims
to encourage recycling and environmentally friendly habits. It
brings together people, businesses, and communities to achieve
real world impact by participating in household recycling and
teaching how to live more sustainable lifestyles. Over 4 million
people have signed up through Recyclebank’s rewards program,
which offers magazine subscriptions and discounts among other
goods. Recyclebank’s online shop, OneTwine.com, combines the
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company’s sustainability expertise and rewards program to help
people make more green choices when purchasing products. The
aim of Recyclebank is educating and rewarding their customers for
recycling. Terracycle does this by setting up collection centers to
Fig. 3.5 - Recyclebank website
make it easier for communities and schools to recycle. TerraCycle
and Recyclebank are not the only companies coming up with
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innovative and profitable ideas for making stylish, environmentally
friendly products out of trash. Other three big company that are
take care of upcycle are Playback clothing, Hipcycle and Preserve.
Playback clothing creates tees, hoodies, and sweatshirts by
transforming trash plastic bottles and clothing scraps into ecoclothing. The company also retains the original color of recycled
material. The lifecycle analysis was done by two students from
Yale University’s Graduate Program in Environmental Studies,
and found that a Playback sweatshirt outperforms conventional
sweatshirts in 23 of 25 environmental categories.
When compared to a conventional cotton/polyester sweatshirt,
the Playback sweatshirt made of 70 percent recycled cotton and
30 percent recycled polyester resulted in:
•
•
•
•
•
•
80 percent less waste
79 percent fewer fossil fuels used
68 percent less global warming potential
49 percent less air pollution
33 percent less land used
25 percent fewer carcinogens
Playback makes its clothes by collecting plastic bottles, glass
bottles and post-industrial cotton scraps. The items are sorted by
color, broken down into fibers and paired with recycled cotton or
polyester. The fibers are re-spun into yarn and knitted into clothes.
The hoodies and sweatshirts are made with 70 percent recycled
Fig. 3.6 - Hipcycle products sells on website
cotton and 30 percent recycled polyester. The recycled PET shirts
contain 65 percent recycled polyester from PET (equivalent to 8.5
bottles) and 35 percent recycled cotton. And the recycled cotton
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T-shirts are a 50/50 blend of recycled cotton and recycled polyester.
Hipcycle is an online retailer, upcycles goods to create home decor,
jewelry and fashion that are durable, affordable and fashionable.
Hipcycle is specializing in upcycled goods that are durable, stylish
and priced fairly compared to similar mainstream items. The
mission is to offer upcycled alternatives to traditional home decor,
jewelry and fashion as a way to reduce global waste. The aim is
educate consumers on the benefits of upcycling, so when given the
choice, they purchase an upcycled product over selecting a new
one. The most important thing learned from these giants of upcycle
that you can develop a sustainable business, based on upcycle, and
focused to mass production; it is possible, creating a profit system
with dual subject. In one hand the upcycle company in the other
company or people that are producing waste.
I want to conclude this chapter with a personal case study that
explain upcycle could be not only sustainable, but also a profitable
business choice.
MIDA More Than Gold is a start-up project, born during university,
based on the up-cycle process of waste raw material resulting from
industrial processes. The first pilot project involves and redesigns
wood wastes from Italian furniture industries, such as Riva1920,
that was the first partnership of MIDA. In September 2014 won Preseed contest at PoliHub Start-up Incubator. It joined several events
and fairs and its products are now sold in 3 shops in Italy.
The name because wood, and its intrinsic characteristics (color,
grain, scent), makes each piece a unique example. MIDA changes
waste-materials’ perception into an endless and self-regenerative
resource. The vision is to give people a precious and unique piece
of nature, obtained with a sustainable process.
Therefor our mission are:
1. Sharing and spreading wood culture and sustainable
consciousness: we want to share our passion for natural
materials bringing a wide range of users near the culture
of wood, thorough the realization of small-scale products
which satisfy an aesthetical requirement and give the
opportunity to be aware of the beautifulness of these rare,
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precious and unknown Woods. Thanks to the quality and
beauty of our products create a graphic an user experience
that rise up the consciousness about a sustainable life
style of the people, because an important part will be the
education.
2. Valorizing
wood waste as raw material: MIDA supports
sustainability and uses wood waste from industrial
productions: wood never loses its beauty and preciousness,
neither if it is a discard.
3. Innovative design: MIDA products are characterized by the
heat of wood and finely cared design; up to now. Some of
the woods we selected have never been used before for
similar products, such as cedar, the millenary kaori from
new zeland, wood from the venice “briccole” used in the
laguna as boat-holders, and many other unique woods will
be used in the future. MIDA exports an alternative material
on a classic product, imitating its forms and preciousness.
4. Creating value products: our products can be compared
to real jewels, because of both the raw material and
the application of a golden insert which Ensures and
distinguishes the authenticity of our products from all the
others.
The values of MIDA are:
• Zero-waste production, recovering industrial waste, giving
a third life cycle to materials
• Made in Italy quality guarantee (world wide recognition)
with local production (km zero)
• Valorizing Italian design
• Working esteemed raw materials, such as wood
• Efficient use of the raw materials that nature provide, and
ensure customer transparency about the used material
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(certified wood).
• Preserve and pass on the craft traditions of those who
came before us and create job opportunities for the wood
industry that is currently in crisis from a readily available
and workable raw material.
The goals of MIDA are establish as a dynamic company in the field
of design, based on the ability to follow and create trends and to
propose to the user high quality products with great sensibility
towards ecological issues. The ecological issue is the pillar of this
start-up because the business plan is based on reuse waste materials
and create a new product using a makers km0. The reason why
I explain this personal example is because the business behind
MIDA, showed in the picture here below, is a type of business that
allowed the upcycle trend became a mass production process,
involving various local actors and the important figure of the
designer as a designer and coordinator of the upcycle process. In
fact, as you can see in the picture MIDA take the waste material
from the factory, create a project for the waste material and send
the project and the materials to the makers to realize the product
in a local context. In some case, as I said before the two actors
Makers and Factory could be the same person in companies such
Fig. 3.9 - The covers of the MIDA catalogs
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Fig. 3.6 - Hipcycle products sells on website
73
Fig. 3.8 - Me and my partner in the factory choosing wood waste and below the ring collection.
74
Fig. 3.11 - MIDA, Man collections of upcycle bowties
Fig. 3.12 - MIDA, Woman collections of upcycle rings
75
as Terracycle. Investing on upcycle by companies could become a
phenomenon of gain. Each factory produces waste and this waste
becomes a cost of disposal, the MIDA system creates an external
connection that we call “bridge” from the company to the makers
that allows to transform the disposal costs in profit. In addition, if
the companies start to investing in the upcycle phenomena in a
local way, they would create jobs did not exist before, becoming a
positive force for the market.
Another important reason is the quality perception. In most of
the pictures that everyone can find in internet or in my thesis, we
can see that the upcycle products generally are not so beautiful;
sometimes the esthetic part is secondary because the most
important think is the concept of the upcycle product, but in MIDA
also the esthetic is a fundamental aspect. All the products that we
had designed are thinking for be beautiful accessorize that are
following the actual trend.
3.3 The behaviors today: survey and interview
Many people are familiar with the basic concept of recycling from
the general pick up of their bottles and cans and newspapers,
the concept of upcycling is new to most people. Recycling is the
practice that takes an item and targets it for reuse, in its same form
but improved, returning it back to the cycle of contribution to
society rather than discarding it to trash. Upcycling is a growing
trend, which is well known and used in Australia and Europe. It is
becoming more and more recognized in America. I see it as an upand-coming trend, with people understanding the absolute need to
limit waste. Indeed the third category is about the people that every
day decide to start a challenge with the waste, for different reason.
As already mentioned in the first part of the chapter in recent years
has developed this new phenomenon, the upcycle, the people do
it individually at homes. For understand this phenomena I create a
survey that I spread to 150 people and made some interview. I decide
to ask mostly to the young designer and design students about the
upcycle topic. I collect 120 answers. Basically the questions of the
survey are divided in four parts, the first is for identify the target,
76
the second is about the knowledge of waste and recycle, the third
try to collect information about upcycle and in the end there are
two questions about the designing process, and the tools for create
innovative ideas. Why people do upcycle? Mostly because it is fun,
and an excellent way to tap into your creative and artistic side. For
others, it is the satisfaction of reusing something and minimizing
wastage. From a design perspective, you can incorporate elements
into your home that have character and substance (qualities
that upcycled objects inherently possess). For Carlo “it’s a great
exercise in problem solving and I get great satisfaction in helping
old materials become useful again.” The increased awareness
of environmental responsibility and a slow economy has led to
a major increase in upcycling. The college student short on cash
may upcycle their out of fashion jeans by adding a few seams and
77
What is your age range?
1.
18-20
21-26
27-35
1
2
3
Do you know about recycling?
Titolo del grafico
yes
no
1 2
Do you know about upcycling? (converting
waste materials or useless products
into new materials or products of better quality or for better environmental
Titolo delvalue)
grafico
yes
no
1
2
78
rips instead of buying a new pair all together. Homeowners are
looking for ways to renovate with salvaged, and in some cases,
free materials. The green mom on a budget may upcycle her old
clothes into clothes for her children. This innovative spirit and
environmental consciousness has led to upcycling in nearly all
areas of life. From green companies to your Mother’s kitchen,
people are looking to save money and the planet. Upcycling does
both. Do you swap or upcycle used items? I think as the economy
tanked, more people turned to buying things secondhand. The
creativity of the people has come forward, creating many different
objects recovering the waste material produced by normal people
that used a spare time to do it.
Close to this home handmade dynamic have developed small
boutiques and online platforms that support the new creative
people who are not necessarily designers or artists, but also
ordinary people who accept the challenge of the upcycle. From
this phenomenon, also born many blogs where people exchange
advice and information about the nature of the material and the
type of processing. In China in 2013 he opened the first store that
sells products upcycle. The Squirrelz, is a green multi-brand store
and China’s first upcycle shop, hopes to spark a trend towards
more sustainable living. Located at the heart of Shanghai’s Eco
Village, a shopping and events hub for all things green, the shop
was founded by designers Bunny Yan and Nicolas Bouthors in June
2013. Although the practice of recycling and reuse still remains an
integral part of China’s resourceful and low-income populations.
Booming middle and upper class consumer power in Chinese
cities such as Shanghai has led to the eschewal of upcycling in
favor of a wasteful consumer culture–a worrying trend that leaves
landfills swelling with discarded products and puts a serious toll
on the environment. “There’s so much waste, overproduction and
defective products out there, especially in China, and so many of
those products can be made with those materials–most of which
are new,” says Yan on why she and Bouthors chose to open China’s
first upcycle design shop. “If we can use our skills to create and help
showcase these interesting designs while contributing to a better
environment then that will be the ultimate win-win situation.” In
addition to carrying the upcycled wares of other Shanghai-based
designers and social enterprises, Squirrelz further reduces landfill-
79
bound waste by reaching out to Chinese companies with defective
and overstocked items and working with them and other designers
to develop upcycled products. The retail shop also hosts arts and
craft classes to teach the community how to upcycle old products.
In a country where mass-production is king, the Squirrelz stands
out as a vanguard of eco-friendly products, each with its own
unique backstory.
3.4 University, experience in the field
The last but not the least category is University upcycle field.
Today around all over the world the phenomena of upcycle is
enter also inside the university program. In Europe, most of the
design university create a specific course and organized contests
where the students can learn more about this topic and use the
creativity to develop some innovative solutions. This year in
April I participated an international upcycle contest made by UK
and Chinese universities. Therefore, I want to start this chapter
with a personal experience here in China and call it, from waste
to wonder. Building on the first three rounds of “International
Fig. 3.13 - People that are participated in the upcycle contest in Wuxi
80
Higher Education Collaboration on Upcycling of Industry Leftovers” which took place respectively in Guangzhou in 2012,
Changsha in 2013and Shanghai in 2014, the British Council with
Chinese partners ran to the 4th round in Wuxi in April 2015. These
workshops have been successful and impactful, bringing concrete
and tangible benefits to both institutions and individuals in both
UK and China. Through participating and working together in the
workshops in previous three years, a number of concrete links
and collaboration projects between universities in UK and China
as well as between university and industries were successfully
generated and developed. The 2015 International Workshop SinoUK Higher Education Collaboration on Upcycling of Industry
Leftovers started on April 10th at Jiangnan University. Presided
over by Deputy Dean Gong Miaoseng from Jiangnan University’s
School of Design, opened a ceremony with a couples of important
figures. The guests included: Xu Zhongyuan, Vice Director of
Science and Technology Bureau of Wuxi City, Representative Zhou
Xiang from British Consulate’s Culture and Education Department,
Qiu Dengke, General Secretary of Guangzhou City Low-carbon
Association, Wei Rui, Brand Director of Guangzhou City Wanluda
Group, Tian Bei, Vice President of Jiangnan University, Zhong Fang,
Director of Jiangnan University’s International Office, and Xing
Xiangyang and Qiu Jianping, respectively served as Dean and Party
Secretary from Jiangnan University’s School of Design. On behalf
of Jiangnan University, Vice President Tian Bei made a speech,
recognizing the forward-looking approaches and achievements in
international cooperation made by Jiangnan University’s School
of Design, giving a briefing of Jiangnan University’s low carbon
energy-saving campus, and speaking highly of the international
and domestic significance of the event. He hopes that the School
of Design should deepen development and reform and promote
Industry College research, so we play an important role in making
a low carbon emission Jiangnan University campus and by
extension such a Wuxi city. Director Xu, Mr. Zhou, Mr. Qiu and Mrs.
Wei Rui successively gave a speech focusing on the supportive
role of the event in low carbon industry. The event is supported
by an international joint program funded in 2012 by the above
institutes. In 2015, the program received the approval of the
supervision under China’s Ministry of Education and is brought
into the Sino-Britain cultural exchange mechanism. The ten day
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British Council event saw selected students and tutors from six
UK universities, three East Asian universities and nine Chinese
universities work collaboratively in teams of three to design
objects with a positive social function using industry leftovers
in Wuxi, China. Consequently, the event had attracted faculty
members and students from different institutions including
Lincoln University, University of Central Lancashire, University
of Plymouth, Nottingham Trent University and Robert Gordon
University, and Chinese institutions including Jiangnan University,
Tsinghua University, Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, Hunan
University, Tongji University, Nanjing University of the Arts, and
Sichuan Fine Arts Institute. This event, with a theme of “lakeshore”
a featured landscape of Wuxi area, is aimed to improve the lakeside
environment, enhance public knowledge of environmental
protection, creating characteristic cultural sights and building a
distinct culture on environmental protection.
During the 10-day event, the participants were required to get
through the activities as follows:
•
Creatively designing with industrial leftovers;
•
On-spot completing their design works;
•
Displaying the works;
Purposes of the upcycle contest:
•
Explore the best ways to upcycle industrial leftovers and to
promote the publicity and application of low-carbon ideas
and Eco Design, following the principle of Reduce, Reuse, and
Recycling.
•
To design works with potential market value from industrial
leftovers and to turn industrial leftovers into products with
cultural and economic values
•
Through this project, partner enterprises will be able to find
paths to innovative designs, establish the best platform of
environment protection and energy conservation to recycle
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industrial leftovers, explore new patterns of production and
circulation, and lay a solid foundation for establishing a low
carbon brand of its own.
•
Participating students will form teams in two ways: with
students from the same university and with students from
abroad as international teams to deign their arts items. They
will work out their designed arts items in the workshop
with industrial leftovers provided. The final arts items made
by each team will be exhibited. Excellent arts items can be
commercially produced by relevant businesses. Organizers
will facilitate the media coverage of the whole competition,
to better inform more Chinese enterprises that industrial
design can be an innovative solution in the era of “low carbon
economy”.
•
Participating students from the universities from China,
UK and East Asia will start their design coordination after
they fully understand the material provided by the Chinese
enterprises. They will share their knowledge and innovation
on low-carbon and sustainable design. Students will also
develop their language skills, team spirit and intercultural
skills. This competition will also help establish connections
between universities in China and aboard and enhance
academic exchange and cooperation.
The competition began with the jury in a way that made us choose
the materials that we had to design. The materials we have received
to design: a plastic profile that was the primary material, sheets of
transparent plastic and plastic strips yellow that were used to close
the packs. The process that we used it can be divided into several
steps: an initial phase where we visited our context and studied our
persona, and how these users interact with the context. Second,
after we discover the problems and the opportunities that could
be fix we tested the materials with different tools to understand
how the material reacted and discover the creative opportunities.
Third, after we tested the material we made a brainstorming to
search for hypothetical solutions. The design did not follow
a regular flow, but has been a path where we gathered to try to
try, reaching separate prototyping through tests and verify if the
83
project was able to solve the problems we had identified. In this
design process, the most important aspect was always to have in
mind a sustainable approach. Sustainable approach in a project
upcycle means:
•
used as much as possible the origin waste materials
•
avoid the addition of glues and other elements that mix
different materials
•
designing projects that are assembled and disassembled
Fig. 3.14 - Main upcycle materials
Fig. 3.15 - Me and my team that are testing and working on upcycle project in Wuxi
84
•
machining and the tools that are using should be simple and
without using large amounts of energy
•
the new product the cycle life instead of becoming useless
throwaways that will quickly be discarded, these items can be
given another life
The outcomes of our design was a system of products that held
different functions relating to the needs that we discovered during
the research phase. The project is based on a triangular shape that
defines a seating system. The seat can become a bench, an amplifier
Fig. 3.16 - Me and my team with the upcycle project
85
or a camping light. What I learned from this experience is how
universities are big source of ideas and creativity; in fact actually,
the projects are applicable in the real world. The realization of
these projects has seen the use of Km0 waste materials and the
ability to create useful design and educational insights for the Wuxi
people.
3.5 Gamification and generation of knowledge
Gamification is the application of game-design elements
and game principles in non-game contexts, such as a project
context. Gamification commonly employs game design
elements which are used in so called non-game contexts
in attempts to improve user engagement, organizational
productivity, flow, learning, employee recruitment and evaluation,
ease of use and usefulness of systems, physical exercise traffic
violations, and voter apathy, among others. Many improvements
that the gamification creates are the goals of my project, which aims
to use an external design dynamic to set up a project path in order
to create innovative ideas. A review of research on gamification
shows that a majority of studies on gamification find positive effects
from gamification. However, individual and contextual differences
exist. Gamification uses an empathy-based approach (such as
Design thinking) for introducing, transforming and operating a
service system that allows players to enter a gameful experience
to support value creation for the players and other stakeholders.
Gamification designers address the user as player to indicate that
the motivations and interests of the player are in the center of the
gamification design. Gamification in a narrow sense is used in a
non-game context, is built into the service system, and is aiming
at an infinite experience. It does not aim at creating a game but
offering a gameful experience. One of the goals of gamification
is aiming to increase the discussion among the members of the
group through the use of the deck of cards, making them interact
with each other pushing them to create custom paths. In a broader
sense gamification also includes game context such as in serious
games and finite and infinite games. Gamification techniques
strive to leverage people’s natural desires for socializing, learning,
86
mastery, competition, achievement, status, self-expression,
altruism, or closure. Early gamification strategies use rewards for
players who accomplish desired tasks or competition to engage
players. Types of rewards include points, achievement badges or
levels, the filling of a progress bar, or providing the user with virtual
currency. Making the rewards for accomplishing tasks visible to
other players or providing leader boards are ways of encouraging
players to compete. Due to potentially problematic consequences
of competition, which can result in unethical behavior, low
cooperation and collaboration, or disadvantaging certain player
demographics such as women best-practice gamification designs
try to refrain from using this element. Another approach to
gamification is to make existing tasks feel more like games. Some
techniques used in this approach include adding meaningful
choice, onboarding with a tutorial, increasing challenge, and adding
narrative. Gamification can be used for ideation, the structured
brainstorming to produce new ideas. A study at MIT Sloan found
that ideation games helped participants generate more and better
ideas, and compared it to gauging the influence of academic papers
by the numbers of citations received in subsequent research.
The use of card-based methods provides tools for brainstorming
exercises during workshops that facilitate creative dialogue
(Hornecker 2010). They also assist in creating an environment for
better understanding the systems that are being designed and the
user interactions and experiences that are being created. Physical
objects such as cards also make tensions and disagreements
between workshop participants more tangible and less personal.
They can also speed up the design process to help participants
focus, and create common ground in application design features
whilst also allowing room for divergent interpretation (Hornecker
2010). Playfulness is deeply rooted in human culture (Huizinga
1955) and any activity can potentially be designed with a playful
approach. This is to not only provide an enjoyable experience for
participants, but to also facilitate the creation of practical design
outcomes (Arrasvouri et al 2011, Lucero and Arrasvuori 2010).
Playful design has been a feature of using game design thinking
in business contexts, and is becoming a key tenet of gamification
(Deterding et al 2011). The definition of gamification used in this
project is an adaptation of the Huotari et al definition of gamification
(2012, 17) as: a process for enhancing the design of a product, service
87
or process with affordances for gameful experiences that supports
overall value creation for stakeholders. Using cards as design tools
provide tangible representations of abstract conceptual concepts,
and are simple to use and easy to manipulate (Wolfiel and Merritt
2013). This helps to make the design process more visible and
less abstract (Hornecker 2010; Lucero and Arrasvuori 2010) and
provides a process to reason and justify design decisions as well
as facilitate a creative ideation process (Mueller et al. 2014). This
is particularly important for gamification design given that there
few rigorous or validated frameworks and tools available to
researchers and practitioners. Introducing a level of playfulness
is also an important element in the overall design process in
enterprise gamification projects in order to stimulate new ways of
thinking about existing problems. In case of use a cards method
to design a project is interesting to understand how generate
knowledge. In fact, using the deck of cards and related tools makes
interaction between two types of tacit and explicit knowledge
outlined by two great Japanese masters Nonaka and Takeuchi. But
let’s start from Polany with the definition of what it means to tacit
knowledge. The term “tacit knowing” or “tacit knowledge” was
first introduced into philosophy by Michael Polanyi in 1958 in
his magnum opus Personal Knowledge. He famously summarizes
the idea in his later work The Tacit Dimension with the assertion
that “we can know more than we can tell.”. He states not only that
there is knowledge that cannot be adequately articulated by verbal
means, but also that all knowledge is rooted in tacit knowledge in
the strong sense of that term. Tacit knowledge has been described
as “know-how” – as opposed to “know-that” (facts). This distinction
is usually taken to date back to a paper by Gilbert Ryle, given to
the Aristotelian society in London in 1945. In this paper Ryle
argues against the (intellectualist) position that all knowledge is
knowledge of propositions (“know-that”), and the view that some
knowledge can only be defined as “know-how” has therefore, in
some contexts, come to be called “anti-intellectualist”. There
are further distinctions: “know-why” (science), or “know-who”
(networking). Tacit knowledge involves learning and skill but not
in a way that can be written down. On this account knowing-how
or embodied knowledge is characteristic of the expert, who acts,
makes judgments, and so forth without explicitly reflecting on the
principles or rules involved. The expert works without having a
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theory of his or her work; he or she just performs skillfully without
deliberation or focused attention Embodied knowledge represents
a learned capability of a human body’s nervous and endocrine
systems (Sensky 2002). Tacit knowledge vs. explicit knowledge:
Although it is possible to distinguish conceptually between explicit
and tacit knowledge, they are not separate and discrete in practice.
The interaction between these two modes of knowing is vital for
the creation of new knowledge. A related point in the area of
“tacit knowledge” is that in many cases, despite the existence of
good library indexing systems and search engines, the way specific
knowledge may be described is not obvious unless one already has
the knowledge. Tacit knowledge can be distinguished from explicit
knowledge in three major areas:
•
Codifiability and mechanism of transferring knowledge: while
explicit knowledge can be codified (an example of that is ‘can
you write it down’ or ‘put it into words’ or ‘draw a picture’),
and easily transferred without the knowing subject, tacit
knowledge is intuitive and unarticulated knowledge that
cannot be communicated, understood or used without the
‘knowing subject’. Unlike the transfer of explicit knowledge,
the transfer of tacit knowledge requires close interaction and
the buildup of shared understanding and trust among them.
•
Main methods for the acquisition and accumulation: Explicit
knowledge can be generated through logical deduction and
acquired through practical experience in the relevant context.
In contrast, tacit knowledge can only be acquired through
practical experience in the relevant context.
•
Potential of aggregation and modes of appropriation: Explicit
knowledge can be aggregated at a single location, stored in
objective forms and appropriated without the participation of
the knowing subject. Tacit knowledge in contrast, is personal
contextual. It is distributive, and cannot easily be aggregated.
The realization of its full potential requires the close
involvement and cooperation of the knowing subject.
The process of transforming tacit knowledge into explicit or
specifiable knowledge is known as codification, articulation,
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or specification. The tacit aspects of knowledge are those that
cannot be codified, but can only be transmitted via training or
gained through personal experience. There is a view against the
distinction, where it is believed that all propositional knowledge
(knowledge that) is ultimately reducible to practical knowledge
(knowledge how). Arguably the most important contributor to
this subject has been Ikujiro Nonaka. He worked extensively with
the concepts of explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge, and drew
attention to the way Western firms tend to focus too much on
the former (Nonaka & Takeuchi 1996). This sentiment has since
been echoed throughout organisational learning and knowledge
management (KM) literature (e.g. Cook & Brown 1999, Kreiner
1999, Tsoukas & Valdimirou 2001, etc.). Nonaka and Takeuchi
introduced the SECI model (Nonaka & Takeuchi 1996) which
has become the cornerstone of knowledge creation and transfer
theory. They proposed four ways that knowledge types can be
combined and converted, showing how knowledge is shared
and created in the organization. The model is based on the two
types of knowledge outlined above. Socialization: Tacit to tacit.
Knowledge is passed on through practice, guidance, imitation, and
observation. Externalization: Tacit to explicit. This is deemed as a
particularly difficult and often particularly important conversion
mechanism. Tacit knowledge is codified into documents, manuals,
etc. so that it can spread more easily through the organization. Since
tacit knowledge can be virtually impossible to codify, the extent
of this knowledge conversion mechanism is debatable. The use
of metaphor is cited as an important externalization mechanism.
Combination: Explicit to explicit. This is the simplest form. Codified
knowledge sources (e.g. documents) are combined to create new
knowledge. Internalization: Explicit to tacit. As explicit sources are
used and learned, the knowledge is internalized, modifying the
user’s existing tacit knowledge.
3.6 Design method: cards
In the world of design methods, there are the cards. They often
consist of whiteboards, flip charts and post-its. Cards have the
possibility to transform analogue work and meetings in both
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structured and creative ways. In a few years we will have a more
diverse view on cards, something that would mean that the decks
would be judged by its content. Most decks got nothing more in
common than the format. When you buy a book, people would
ask: What book did you buy? Who authored it? What is it about? Is
it good? Would I like it? You should ask those questions with card
decks too. Physical cards have been popular design tools, perhaps
because they are simple, tangible and easy to manipulate. Aside
from the well known Card Sorting method, cards have been used
widely by designers to make the design process visible and less
abstract and serve as communication tools between members of
the design team and users. There are many examples of unique
method card systems, many have similar features and formal
qualities, yet it is not easy to get an overview of the available card
systems in order to decide which to use, and when. There are many
examples of cards being used to assist or provide structure to the
design.
Here in the following pages I explain some examples defining the
five dimensions and graduations, with in the dimensions are in
revealing key differences across the examples including:
•
•
•
•
•
Intended Purpose & Scope
Duration of use and placement in design process
System or Methodology of use
Customization
Formal Qualities
These attributes describe claims from the literature of the authors,
the formal characteristics, and the tools in use. While these may
seem closely related, it is an initial step in developing a framework
for discussing the design attributes in card-based tools. Graduations
within these dimensions were chosen to differentiate the examples
future work is needed, however to validate and develop these
further.
Intended purpose & Scope. Based on research literature or from
booklets and inserts included in the card packages, the respective
authors have made claims as to where their tools fit within the
design process (ideation, inspiration, engaging non-designers,
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etc.). In this category we can ask: where in the design process
are the cards used and how should they be used? Do they have a
specific purpose and do they focus on a particular context? Here
are identified three graduations of intended purpose & scope,
ranging from very general to context specific.
•
General/Repository card systems provide inspiration and
challenge designers to take another point of view. An
example here are the Oblique Cards, which can be engaged
with at any time in any context to increase lateral thinking
and stimulate design problem solving in general. These
types of cards aim for open-ended inspiration with little
or no guidance on their use. These cards mainly function
as repositories for design methods, capturing well known
methods from important literature and offload the task of
remembering the many design methods.
•
We also found various examples of cards, which focus
on participatory design. They seek to develop sensitivity
and empathy for the context, and engage de-signers and
users in the process. Some cards are designed for a better
communication between users and designers, examples
here are the Questionable Concept Cards, which encourage
criticism and debate or the Inspiration Cards that require
collaborative work between designers and domain experts
using the cards.
•
There are also context specific/ agenda driven examples.
This includes those cards focused on a particular context or
design agenda as the Sound Design Deck, which facilitates
sound design in games or the Design Play Cards, which
focus on de-signing for sustainability.
Duration of use/ when in process. It is important to acknowledge
the time investment that the various systems require and to know
when in the process they are used. This dimension includes
key differences in the length of time ranging from one time use
to sustained use of the system throughout the design process.
Another aspect is the placement in the design process whether the
cards should be used in the very beginning, after initial field studies
92
or prior to mockup sessions and prototyping. Four groups were
identified, which range from anywhere/anytime to at a specific
point in time.
•
The Oblique Cards are an example of cards that can be
used anywhere/anytime in the process. They can be useful
in the very first phase of idea generation, but also when
facing problems during the design, being stuck or looking
for alternatives. Cards presenting a collection of methods
as the IDEO Method Cards, are often positioned to be used
as needed. As they provide a lot of different methods, some
of those will fit in an early design stage, whereas others are
for evaluation and testing.
•
Other cards should be used at the beginning of the process
as they provide input for further concept development; for
example, PictureCARDs are used after an initial field study
and provide the basis for the card creation.
•
The last aspect of time is that cards are used at a specific
point, for example in a workshop. The Sound Design
Deck is used in this way, when applying the introduced
methodology.
But even though most of the work with the cards is done in
a short session (~2h), one should still refer back to the cards
later in the design process.
•
System or Methodology of use. Some of the cards can be used
very freely, whereas others provide a methodology how to use the
cards. Some of the approaches are playful and game like; some
have rules or discreet steps that should be followed. This can be
helpful to get started using the cards but might at the same time
be restrictive. We identified three groups in this category: no
methodology, suggestion for use and specific instructions.
•
Cards with no system are used ad-hoc with no suggested
structured process provided by the authors. Cards of this
type include IDEO, SUTD, and Oblique.
•
Most of the cards offer at least a basic suggestion for use.
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The DSKD Cards come with a small brochure, which has
some examples how the cards can be used. The authors of
the Picture CARDs describe how they were using the cards,
but there are no hard and fast, specific rules.
•
The last category describes cards in which specific
instructions are given. The authors of the Sound Design
Cards introduced a specific method of how to use the cards,
including a workspace with four regions in which cards can
be moved, thus facilitating idea generation and keeping
track of the design work at the same time. Inspiration Cards
also provide specific instructions, noting where the cards
should be arranged on a poster to formulate a design idea.
Customization. Although we acknowledge that any technology
tool will be adapted and appropriated into the user’s life, in this
dimension, I describe the degree to which the tool provides for
customization as part of its use.
•
The first group in this category is no customization. When
we examine the SUTD, Oblique, etc cards, they are intended
to be static and unchanged.
•
Cards offering trivial customization, do not allow the user
to add or modify content, but only to structure or group
the cards. This is the case with the IDEO iPhone app that in
most respects replicates the paper cards allowing the user
to make groups and add cards to the groups. The Sound
Design Deck provides for optional customization, whereas
users can create their own cards and add them to a wiki.
This is intended and welcome by the authors, as they aim
to create a pattern language for sound design.
•
The last group of cards requires customization in order to
be utilized. Examples here are the Inspiration Cards, the
Ideation Deck or Questionable Concept Cards. The cards
have to be created beforehand and are therefore applicable
in the specific project, which helps the designer to get a
better understanding of the project domain.
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Formal qualities. While the focus of this paper is on “cards”, there
are differences in the physical properties (2-sides, paper, size,
shape), connections to virtual systems (stand alone or connected
to objects in the room or in the virtual world), and appearances
(images, diagrams, words, color schemes, etc.) Other formal
qualities include issues such as the fact that some card systems have
only one copy of a card vs. multiple copies, etc. We do not provide
for all possible configurations, however, we provide graduations
according to the use of media.
•
The simplest type of cards have only text or only images,
while most of the cards combine text and image or
illustration, like the Inspiration Cards or the PLEX Cards.
The authors of PLEX Cards present their evaluation of the
cards, and describe feedback regarding the images. This
feedback highlights the importance of choosing suitable
images for cards they claim that the image should be
abstract enough to allow an open interpretation, but at the
same time detailed enough so that the user can relate to
and interpret it.
•
There are various card systems where the content is divided
into different categories, as with the IDEO Method cards or
the SUTD Cards, which provides thematic structure in the
cards and suggests how the cards relate to each other.
•
Finally, there are some cards, which have a virtual
component, as in the Sound Design Deck, which connects
the physical cards to the online wiki providing additional
information and example videos.
In the two diagrams, I used initials instead of full names, for this
in the following lines I quoted all the full names; ensure that the
source is available. (PC) Picture Card, (LC) Layered Card, (IC)
Inspiration Card, (DH) Design Heuristics, (ID) Ideation Deck, (PX)
Plex Card, (SDO) Sound Design Deck, (QCC) Questionable Concept
Card, (ICT) Instant Card Technique, (EIC) Eco Innovators Cards,
(OS) Oblique Strategies, (VEC) Visual Explorer Cards, STUD, IDEO,
SILK, DSKD, (BL) Bootleg, (MK) MethodKit.
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Fig. 3.17 - Deck cards analysis and competitors
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Fig. 3.17 - Deck cards analysis and competitors
In these two diagrams, I analyzed eighteen typology of cards tool
and I selected three of them for studied the details and using like
driver for positioning my tool kit. After I chose my competitors
for the card method based on the previous analysis, I go in deep
to discover the specific characteristics of the three typology of
cards. Among all eighteen examples I have selected only three
for particular reasons. The first for customers they serve, all three
of my competitors have as customers large multinationals like
Google, Apple, Samsun, etc... Second according to the logic behind
them, it is very different for all three. For Methodkit is based on
the discussion using simply words that the user can find on the
cards, IDEO uses images and detailed explanation of the process
on card, and finally Eco Innovators Cards uses the examples
related to the title of the cards for involve the user. Another reason
is that both IDEO and Eco Innovators Cards have a subdivision by
phase even if different, while MethodKit is based on freedom of use
during the process. IDEO followed these three phase: Inspirations,
Innovation and Implementation, Instead Eco Innovators Cards
using Inspiration, Problem and Strategy.
3.7 main challenge
Victor Papanek died in 1998, but 40 years after his book “Design
for the real world” was first published, it is still in print and hugely
influential and he is praised as a pioneer of sustainable and
humanitarian design.
“One of my first jobs after leaving school was to design a table radio”
Papanek wrote in Design for the Real World. “This was shroud design:
the design of external covering of the mechanical and electrical guts.
It was my first, and I hope my last, encounter with appearance design,
styling, or design ‘cosmetics’.” (Victor Papanek, Design for the Real
World: Human Ecology and Social Change; Pantheon Books, 1971.)
Further, he opined: “Only a small part of our responsibility lies in
the area of aesthetics.” Papanek traveled around the world, he gave
lectures about his ideas for ecologically sound design and designs
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to serve the poor, the disabled, the elderly and other minority
segments of society. He wrote or co-wrote eight books. How could
the designer, who must make a living actually serve “real needs” of
human beings? “I have tried to demonstrate that by freely giving 10
percent of his time, talents, and skills the designer can help.” In other
words, a willingness to volunteer. Design can and must become a
way in which people can participate in changing society. Another
famous sentence is “All men are designers.” Indeed all we do, almost
all the time, is design, for design is basic to all human activity. The
planning and patterning of any act towards a desired, foreseeable
end constitutes the design process. Any attempt to separate design,
to make it a thing-by-itself, works counter to the inherent value,
of design as the primary underlying matrix of life. Composing an
epic poem, executing a mural, painting a masterpiece, writing a
concerto. However, design is also cleaning and reorganizing a desk
drawer, pulling an impacted tooth, baking an apple pie. Design is
the conscious effort to impose meaningful order. So now that I’m
at the end of my university career I start to find some answers in
my head which are based on the shoulders of masters met these
years. General questions such us: what is design? Who can be a
designer? Also during these years I have cultivated a passion for
design itself to figure out what was the context, the task the place to
which I could dedicate all my energy. In this long journey already
from the end of my third year, I started growing my inclination
towards recycling. After thorough this issue thanks to some studies
I looked at the world of upcycle. Through this method, I rediscover
my creativity, because an upcycle project require a precise method
that is based till now on a personal experience on the designer,
who must create a personal knowledge and increase his aware by
studying new discoveries and innovations in this area. Creativity is a
mental attitude, in my case does not matter if it concerns a product,
an environment or an accessory, every time I am or I was facing a
project of upcycle, I found in myself all the excitement for the new
challenge. In the United States and Europe, “recycling” refers to a
process that yields a substance that is equivalent to the original raw
material. The process is known as “upcycling” when a substance
of greater value is obtained, while processes such as incineration,
which yields only low value heat, are known as downcycling.
1. First problem cost of recycle: find a new way using less energy
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for creating a second life cycle of products.
Because the cost of refining metals is high, the metal recycling
business has developed smoothly. By contrast, while the enactment
of the Act on the Promotion of Sorted Collection and Recycling of
Containers and Packaging has resulted in the recycling of some
waste plastics (primarily plastic bottles), it is known that it is
difficult to pursue this recycling business in a profitable manner.
If upcycling technology for waste plastics were to be developed, it
would have the potential to become the basis of an economically
Fig. 3.19 - Picture made by Santtu Mustonen
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feasible recycling method. Plastic bottles, for one, are great to create
all kinds of neat things. Here are some more statistics to convince
you of the urgency of our plastic bottle problem. Making bottles
to meet America’s demand for bottled water uses more than 17
million barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel 1.3 million cars for a
year. The energy we waste using bottled water would be enough to
power 190,000 homes. Last year, the average American used 167
disposable water bottles, but only recycled 38. The recommended
eight glasses of water a day, at U.S. tap rates equals about $.49 per
year; that same amount of bottled water is about $1,400. So we have
to think a new solution that bring the positive aspect from recycle
but could reduce the energy for reuse materials.2. Second problem
education: how improve the knowledge of the people about
waste? And, how to teach them to reuse the materials? Education
is a big challenge. The purpose of this thesis is highlights the fact
that designer could be the bridge between different stakeholders
such us company that are producing waste and common people
or other company that could reuse the waste materials of them.
For understand better the second challenge I want talk about two
case studies. First is called “Le collane di Rose” From Uganda pearl
necklaces from recycled paper. A good present and beautiful,
made by the women of Meeting Point International, Kampala,
local NGO and partner of AVSI Foundation, which cares for 5
thousand people, mostly HIV-positive women and orphans of war
or disease. The organization was founded in the early 90s by an
African nurse. Rose Busingye, which initially aimed to assist these
mothers, who in the encounter with her have learned to help each
other and to take care of themselves and their family. Their main
job was to break stones: they were pebbles to sell for a few dollars
a day. Rose, with a strong entrepreneurial spirit, thought to teach
these women to make necklaces from recycled paper rolled and
glue. This activity soon became a real job, which today enables
these women to earn money and gain access to a quality of life
better and better. Over the years, with the proceeds it was built
a kindergarten, and now there is a project for the construction
of a secondary school. Rose’s necklaces are also required to send
children to school and to buy the necessary drugs to defeat AIDS,
a disease which still unfortunately many are sick. The example
of the neckless is important because underline the figure of Rose
Busingye like a bridge between normal people and the industries
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Fig. 3.20 - The upcycled Neckless
Fig. 3.21 - http://www.bbc.com/news/23309804 BBC news reportage from India waste situations
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that produce waste. The second case study came from BBC News
of July 2013, the title of the news was “Upcycling - the answer to
India’s waste problem?” There are many environmental issues in
India. Air pollution, water pollution, garbage, and pollution of the
natural environment are all challenges for India. The situation was
worse between 1947 through 1995. According to data collection and
environment assessment studies of World Bank experts, between
1995 through 2010, India has made one of the fastest progress in
the world, in addressing its environmental issues and improving
its environmental quality. T rash and garbage is a common sight
in urban and rural areas of India. It is a major source of pollution.
Indian cities alone generate more than 100 million tons of solid
waste a year. Street corners are piled with trash. Public places
and sidewalks are despoiled with filth and litter, rivers and canals
act as garbage dumps. In part, India’s garbage crisis is from rising
consumption. India’s waste problem also points to a stunning failure
of governance. In 2011, several Indian cities embarked on waste-toenergy projects of the type in use in Germany, Switzerland and
Japan. For example, New Delhi is implementing two incinerator
projects aimed at turning the city’s trash problem into electricity
resource. These plants are being welcomed for addressing the
city’s chronic problems of excess untreated waste and a shortage
of electric power. They are also being welcomed by those who
seek to prevent water pollution, hygiene problems, and eliminate
rotting trash that produces potent greenhouse gas methane. The
projects are being opposed by waste collection workers and local
unions who fear changing technology may deprive them of their
livelihood and way of life. Now a growing trend called ‘Upcycling’
is encouraging people to take waste products and give them a new
life. But just how much of a difference will it make? Shilpa Kannan
reports from Delhi. Not only upcycle DIY made from single people
for daily life routine but also social upcycle, in India we can find
schools, offices and public spaces with upcycle furniture, such as:
school desks made from waste assembled creatively, milk cartons
that become pen, lamps made of empty bottle, shelves made of
plastic fruit baskets, walls built with pieces of bicycle and others
stuff made with upcycle techniques.
3. Create treasure with trash is not an easy work
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Upcycling is a buzzword tied to sustainability that is finding its
way into everything from restaurant décor to online gift shops.
Craft fairs are filled with Mason jar lights, homes are built from
boxcars, napkin holders are made from toilet paper rolls, and
all are labeled as “Upcycled Art.” Repurposing used items is a
wonderful way to save money on materials and to spotlight our
habits of creating too much disposable garbage. However, creative
reuse isn’t always good for the earth. Too many, “upcycling” is as
simple as turning trash into treasure, but a better way to think of it
is as a type of creative reuse that elevates the status of an item’s life
cycle in an environmentally sustainable way. The key to turning
creative reuse genius into upcycling gold is to think of the final
product’s complete life cycle, and to consider what will happen
when it, and all of its components are no longer desired in their
current form. This “cradle-to-cradle” approach is what makes a
creation environmentally sustainable. Sourcing materials is where
things get tricky. If the materials used are in no way reusable,
repairable, or recyclable, then have at it. Make it more valuable
than it was before and bolster up its status in the cycle of use. But
better still, you can use materials that can be composted, recycled,
or dismantled and reused in an infinitely continuous cycle of
life. Unfortunately, many creative reuse projects can actually
turn once-recyclable or reusable items into inevitable trash. For
example, plastic bottles cut up into light fixtures or plant holders
are no longer recyclable. Electronic circuit boards get transformed
into jewelry or attached to wood and other items that e-waste
recyclers would turn away. Likewise with textiles: Instead of using
tattered or stained T-shirts, perfectly wearable ones that could
clothe the needy are sewn into pillows. Seashells glued to glass
bottles, metals permanently adhered to non-metal materials, or
paper and cardboard covered with tape or glue are all common
reuse projects that turn a once-valuable, recyclable object into
a landfill-bound piece of garbage. The principals of sustainable
upcycling can and should extend beyond creative reuse projects
and into our planning process for making all new items and
commodities. From packaging to function, production process,
shipment, by-product waste, environmental and social impact of
material sources, and of course the cradle-to-cradle life cycle for
the final product, all decisions along the creative process can be
made with the environment in mind.
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4
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PROJECT: THE
CARDS METHOD
BECAME
A BRIDGE
BETWEEN
DESIGNERS AND
UPCYCLE IDEAS
I decided to dedicate a lot of space in my thesis to try to understand
in detail what the upcycle was if it were truly an innovative way to
deal with the problem of waste and consumerism. I later analyzed
as today large companies, multinationals and innovative design
studios, facing the generation of ideas. In fact, from the research
that has emerged it is that one of the most interesting and innovative
is the deck of cards. There is only one type of deck of cards, from
research analysis you can see how there are different approaches
to this method; my project is based on the main characteristics
studied in competitors. Designers, like everyone else on the planet,
have good reason to be concerned about the future. The world is
volatile, and the ability of the human race to make a healthy home
for itself is at stake. Threats from global warming, poor nutrition,
disease, terrorism, and nuclear weapons challenge the potential of
everyone to exercise productive energies for the common good.
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Designers are certainly among those whose positive contributions
are essential to the building of a more humane world. Trained
in many disciplines whether product design, architecture,
engineering, visual communication, or software development
they are responsible for the artifacts, systems, and environments
that make up the social world bridges, buildings, the Internet,
transportation, advertising, and clothing, to cite only a few examples.
Companies would have nothing to manufacture without designers,
nor would they have services to offer. Paradoxically, designers
united as a professional class could be inordinately powerful
and yet their voices in the various for a where social policies and
plans are discussed and debated are rarely present. While the
world has heard many calls for social change, few have come from
designers themselves, in part because the design community has
not produced its own arguments about what kinds of change it
would like to see. Tomás Maldonado and other design theorists
in Italy beginning in the 1970s. They characterized the designer
as one who projects or makes projects, and they spoke about the
cultura del progetto or “culture of the project.” Maldonado strongly
articulated his position in a seminal, 1970 book La Speranza
Progettuale which was translated into English two years later as
Design, Nature and Revolution: Toward a Critical Ecology. As a core
theme, Maldonado focused on the “human environment,” which
he characterized as “one of the many subsystems that compose
the vast ecological system of nature.” Following a systems theory
model, he claimed that among subsystems, “only ours possesses
today the virtual and real capacity of provoking substantial that is
irreversible disturbances in the equilibrium of other subsystems.”
Designers are complicit in this process, but Maldonado raised
the question of how their role could change. The impetus for his
book was the urgency he felt to counter the rapid degradation of
the environment and, although he recognized that autonomous
design action is difficult in any social system, he urged a substantial
effort on the designer’s part to play a role in a process of social
change. According to my research and the three challenge that I
highlights I developed a project for help the designer to create and
generate new ideas whit a sustainable thinking. This project stems
from the need to implement the use of discipline upcycle and
make sure that could spread in the areas of project. The decision
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to create a toolkit is based on ‘evidence that the design process
needs to be guided and divided into steps that the designer needs
to do to achieve a result. Cards as explained above in the section
of the research are scientifically proven to be an excellent tool
to stimulate discussion and interaction between the people and
this is revealed as base to create innovative ideas, also in every
design project the various steps are synthesized with the maps,
for this become a fundamental point of the project. Maps that will
be guidelines for creating a ordered summary of the steps of the
project. There is currently no a deck of cards for designers to help
develop projects upcycle, there are various types of card decks
(eighteen of the most famous were analyzed in chapter Research).
In particular, this is based on the ability to customize their cards
with a personal experience and implement the deck of cards with
instruments and eco pillars that are considered missing. Leave
space for new cards is as if they are reflected in a physical concept of
open source that is present in the website. Create a deck of cards to
design is a long process, collect the experiences of designers share
them through social, leave space for imagination and creativity
during the design process. For these reasons I created UpKit a tool
kit to generate sustainable ideas through a guided process which
stimulates discussion and interaction in the work team.
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How can I help people to
create Upcycle project
using sustainable thinking?
How PSS design could
become a holistic approach
for create an Upcycle
project?
What are the methods and
tools that could help
the designers to generate
new ideas?
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4.1 Personas
Thanks to the research and after an intense observation of the
potential users, and taking in consideration my five years of
experience I came out whit four archetypes built that are my
personas. Each persona is based on a fictional character whose
profile gathers up the features of an existing social group. In this way
the personas assume the attributes of the groups they represent:
from their social and demographic characteristics, to their own
needs, desires, habits and cultural backgrounds. For this project, I
identified four personas, from every part of the design, in which I
investigated the possible need of a tool during the design process.
In this case the four personas represent the four areas in which
it would be interesting to introduce my project. The first group
is about students that need something that help them during the
design process like a guide line, the second is a professor. Teachers
have an important task, because they have to educate future
designers for this should find interesting ways to engage students
during class and at the same time give content that can stimulate
a personal opinion derived from a project experience. The third a
fourth personas are two professional designer work in a famous
design firm and in a international company that have a design
department inside. Often it happens when you design students
that during the process you get lost in the following roadways that
are useless or you find yourself stuck, as no way out, looking for
a system or a solution to the problem. The biggest problem that
Yang Bo faces with her students is to teach a method, but also to
raise awareness on the issue of sustainability is a hot topic in China.
Professor Yang is a very up to date, is always looking for innovative
ways to inspire students. Jessy is headed for a close knit group of
designers. She loves her job. Often it faces projects in which the
co-design method with customers is a key part, and the study is
developing projects that require a sustainable approach. Luke is
fond of sustainability.
The biggest problem he encounters every time in his travels is to be
able to co design with other people of completely different cultures
and backgrounds.
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4.2 Main challenge and what if
After a thorough search, and after defining the personas, before
start designing I applied the method of frame challenge. The main
challenge of my project are two:
• Knowledge of upcycle, because among designers but also
among ordinary people the upcycle is a subject often very
vague, devoid of rules that tend to reuse indistinguishably
any material mixing it, without taking into account the
future environmental impact. Many designers are not
aware of this method and then do not take this in designing
a new product that you could design a second life cycle
of the product. In addition, there is a lack of knowledge
around this method as I have already explained in
the research is much more sustainable in some cases,
compared to recycling. Exist many positive case studies
but not well known, and the theoretical knowledge to
build a personal experience can be found only in books.
So, what if you could have something to give cues to create
a personal knowledge in the upcycle field?
•
Create a treasure from thrash. Today it often happens that
the word upcycle describes products that are absolutely
not sustainable and where the waste is transformed
into other waste disposable. For this reason, what if the
designer can have some insight that help to develop a
useful and meaningful project?
•
Guide process in Upcycle field. The final challenge will be
to find a solution to ensure that any type of designer is
guided through the process, because there are no tools
to do sessions of upcycle co-design. Therefore, what if
the designer had a pocket tools that help them to make
sustainable projects?
4.3 Deck of cards and book for generate
knoledge
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During a huge brainstorming where I came out whit UpKit concept.
First, I define a winning method in the design, opting for design
Thinking that I was able to use for other projects, after I defined
the tools contained in the deck cards and in the end all the things
that are useful to improve the knowledge about upcycle method.
So first of all I go in deep in the meaning of Design Thinking today.
In The Sciences of the Artificial, Herbert Simon (1996) outlined one
of the first formal models of the Design Thinking process. Simon’s
model consists of seven major stages, each with component stages
and activities, which are as follows: Understanding, Observation,
Defining (the problem), Ideation, Prototyping, and Testing. As
these stages are not always sequential, often occurring in parallel
and repeated over the course of an iterative process, they are best
thought of as modes (Waloszek, 2012). Simon’s model is seen by
many as the most typical of the Design Thinking models; with
the various stages represented in most Design Thinking projects.
Design process models identify the stages involved and help
describe and define the activities you would expect to be carried at
each of these stages. Every project will involve activities specific to
the product under development, but the central idea behind each
stage remains, largely, the same. Below you will find a description
of each stage as outlined by Simon in 1996.
Basically, Design Thinking is a design methodology. It differs from
traditional design approaches in specific ways described below.
For example, some authors characterize Design Thinking as more
creative and user-centered than traditional design approaches.
Design Thinking can be regarded as a problem solving method or,
by some definitions, a process for the resolution of problems.
As a solution-based approach to solving problems, Design Thinking
is particularly useful for addressing so-called “wicked” problems.
Wicked means that they are ill defined or tricky. For ill defined
problems, both the problem and the solution are unknown at
the outset of the problem-solving process, as opposed to “tame”
or “well-defined” problems, where the problem is evident and the
solution is possible with some technical knowledge. Even when
the general direction of the problem may be clear, considerable
time and effort is spent on clarifying the requirements. Thus, in
Design Thinking, a large part of the problem-solving activity is
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comprised of defining and shaping the problem.
In Design Thinking, designers do not make any early judgments
about the quality of ideas. As a result, this minimizes the fear of
failure and maximizes input and participation in the ideation and
prototype phases. “Outside the box thinking” is encouraged in the
earlier process stages, since this style of thinking is believed to
lead to creative solutions that would not have emerged otherwise.
The motto here is “everyone is a designer.” According to Baeck
& Gremett (2011), Design Thinking is a more creative and usercentered approach to problem solving than traditional design
methods. They point out that “Design Thinking defies the obvious
and instead embraces a more experimental approach.” The heart
of the method is in understanding the customer: All ideas and
subsequent work stem from knowing the customer.
The Design Thinking methodology is not just applied to design
problems. Design Thinking is seen as a way to apply design
methodologies to any of life’s situations. It is often used to
explore and define business problems and to define products
and services. In other words, Design Thinking brings the design
approach into the business world. In this vein, Design Thinking
has been characterized as a discipline in which the designer’s
sensibility and methods match people’s needs, by applying what is
technically feasible and by contemplating what a viable business
strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity.
As a methodology or style of thinking, it combines empathy for
the context of a problem, creativity in the generation of insights
and solutions, and rationality and feedback to analyze and fit
solutions to the context. All this helps derive a solution that meets
user needs and at the same time generates revenue, that is, drives
business success.
The characteristics of Design Thinking:
•
Focus on human values and needs. Have empathy for the
people, solicit user feedback, and use it in their designs
•
Make experimentation an integral part of the design process,
are active “doers”, communicate through meaningful artifacts
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•
•
•
Collaborate with people from various backgrounds and
respects their viewpoints; enable “breakthrough insights and
solutions to emerge from the diversity”.
Can deal with wicked problems, are curious and optimistic, are
integrative (holistic) thinkers who look at the bigger context
for the customer.
Are mindful of the overall Design Thinking process with
respect to goals and methods.
Design Thinking process as follows:
•
Understand the problem: Get an initial understanding of the
problem
•
Observe users: Observe users, visit them in their work
environment, observe physical spaces and places
•
Interpret the results: Interpret the empirical findings
•
Generate ideas: Engage in brainstorming sessions to generate
as many ideas as possible (expand the solution space)
•
Prototype, experiment: Build prototypes and share them
with other people (narrow down the solution space again,
experimental phase)
•
Test, implement, improve: Test, implement, and refine the
design (narrow down the solution space again; solution-driven
phase)
So based on the Design Thinking method the process that I will use
in the deck cards to guide the designer is made from five different
steps: empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test.
Empathize. Empathy is the starting point for innovation. The
first stage of the Design Thinking process involves some form of
information gathering and visualization. Designers will attempt to
develop as deep understanding of the problems they are trying to
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Fig. 4.3 - Five process steps
Fig. 4.4 - The map of the tools design connected with the process steps
Figure 4.1 - The map of eco pillars related with the tools and the design process
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solve and to empathize with the eventual users, customers, and/
or consumers. In the second stage or mode, designers, possibly
joined by some of the project stakeholders, investigate further by
observing real users, employees, customers, and anyone either
who will be using the product at the end or that might provide
inspiration in the design process. Various methods of observation
are used, but generally, the design team will passively observe users/
customers/etc. passively in a natural environment. Depending on
time constraints, a substantial amount of information is gathered at
the stage to inform the next stage and to develop the best possible
understanding of the problems that underlie the development of
that particular product.
Empathy is the foundation of a human-centered design process. To
empathize, we:
• Observe. View users and their behavior in the context of
their lives.
• Engage. Interact with and interview users through both
scheduled and short ‘intercept’ encounters.
• Immerse. Experience what your user experiences.
Define. At this stage the information gathered from the first two
stages is collected together, analyzed and used to help the team
define the problems they have identified up to this point. The
results are interpreted in terms of the product under development,
to help the designers establish features, functions, and any other
elements that will allow them to solve the problems or, at the very
least, allow users to rectify issues themselves with the minimum
of difficulty. The define mode is when you unpack and synthesize
your empathy findings into compelling needs and insights, and
scope a specific and meaningful challenge. It is a mode of “focus”
rather than “flaring.” Two goals of the define mode are to develop a
deep understanding of your users and the design space and, based
on that understanding, to come up with an actionable problem
statement: your point of view. Your point of view should be a guiding
statement that focuses on specific users, and insights and needs
that you uncovered during the empathize mode. More than simply
defining the problem to work on, your point of view is your unique
design vision that you created based on your discoveries during
your empathy work. Understanding the meaningful challenge to
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address and the insights that you can leverage in your design work
is fundamental to creating a successful solution. As a test, a good
point of view is one that:
• Provides focus and frames the problem
• Inspires your team
• Provides a reference for evaluating competing ideas
• Empowers your team to make decisions independently in
parallel
• Fuels brainstorms by suggesting “how might we”
statements
• Captures the hearts and minds of people you meet
• Saves you from the impossible task of developing concepts
that are all things to all people
• Is something you revisit and reformulate as you learn by
doing
• Guides your innovation efforts
Ideate. At this stage, designers generate ideas. They are encouraged
to “think outside the box” to identify new solutions, and alternative
ways of viewing the problem. Brainstorming sessions are typically
used to stimulate free thinking and to expand the problem space.
A variety of other methods are also used, but the central drive is to
get as many ideas or problem solutions as possible, so that they can
then investigate and test them to find the best way to either solve
a problem or provide the elements required to circumvent the
problem. Ideate is the mode during your design process in which
you focus on idea generation. Mentally it represents a process of
“going wide” in terms of concepts and outcomes it is a mode of
“flaring” rather than “focus.” The goal of ideation is to explore a
wide solution space both a large quantity of ideas and a diversity
among those ideas. From this vast depository of ideas you can
build prototypes to test with users. You ideate in order to transition
from identifying problems into exploring solutions for your users.
Various forms of ideation are leveraged to:
• Step beyond obvious solutions and thus increase the
innovation potential of your solution set
• Harness the collective perspectives and strengths of your
teams
• Uncover unexpected areas of exploration
• Create fluency (volume) and flexibility (variety) in your
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•
innovation options
Get obvious solutions out of your heads, and drive your
team beyond them
Prototype. The design team will now produce a number of
inexpensive, scaled down versions of the product or specific
features found within the product, so they can investigate the
problem solutions generated in the previous stage. Prototypes
might be shared and tested within the team itself, in other
departments or on a small group of people outside the design team.
This is an experimental phase, where the aim is to identify the best
possible solution for each of the problems identified in the first
three phases. The solutions are implemented within the prototypes
and one-by-one they are investigated and either accepted or
rejected on the basis of the user’s experiences. By the end of this
stage, the design team will have a better idea of the constraints
inherent within the product, the problems that are present, and
have a better/more informed perspective of how real users would
behave, think, and feel when interacting with the end product.
Prototyping is getting ideas and explorations out of your head and
into the physical world. A prototype can be anything that takes a
physical form be it a wall of post-it notes, a role-playing activity, a
space, an object, an interface, or even a storyboard. The resolution
of your prototype should be commensurate with your progress
in your project. In early explorations keep your prototypes rough
and rapid to allow yourself to learn quickly and investigate a lot of
different possibilities. Prototypes are most successful when people
(the design team, the user, and others) can experience and interact
with them. What you learn from those interactions can help drive
deeper empathy, as well as shape successful solutions.
Test. Designers or evaluators rigorously test the complete product,
with the best solutions identified during the prototyping phase.
This is the last stage of the model, but in an iterative process the
results collected from the testing phase are used to redefine one
or more problems and inform the understanding of the users,
the conditions of use, how people think, behave, and feel, and to
empathize. Even within this phase, alterations and refinements are
made to falsify problem solutions and derive as deep understanding
of the product and its users as possible. Testing is the chance to
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refine our solutions and make them better. The test mode is another
iterative mode in which we place our low-resolution artifacts in
the appropriate context of the user’s life. Prototype as if you know
you’re right, but test as if you know you’re wrong.
After defined the process I do a huge brainstorming for understand
which kind of tools are useful to generate new idea in the five phase.
I came out with 32 tools. Most of the tools can be use in different
phase of the process not only in one as I show in the map that I
design.
1. Scenario. Is a narrative of foreseeable interactions of user
2.
3.
roles and the technical system, which usually includes
computer hardware and software. A scenario has a goal,
which is usually functional. A scenario describes one way
that a system is or is envisaged to be used in the context
of activity in a defined time frame. The time frame for
a scenario could be a single transaction; a business
operation; a day or other period; or the whole operational
life of a system. Similarly, the scope of a scenario could be a
single system or piece of equipment; an equipped team or
department; or an entire organization.
Focus group. Is a form of qualitative research in which
a group of people are asked about their perceptions,
opinions, beliefs, and attitudes towards a product, service,
concept, advertisement, idea, or packaging. Questions are
asked in an interactive group setting where participants
are free to talk with other group members.
Prototype. A prototype is designed to test and try a new
design to enhance precision by system analysts and users.
Prototyping serves to provide specifications for a real,
working system rather than a theoretical one. Prototypes
explore different aspects of an intended design:
• A Proof-of-Principle Prototype explores
some functional, but not all, aspects of
the intended design.
• A Form Study Prototype explores
the size and appearance, but not the
functionality, of the intended design.
• A User Experience Prototype captures
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4.
5.
enough aspects of the intended design
that it can support user research.
• A Visual Prototype captures the size and
appearance, but not the functionality, of
the intended design.
• A Functional Prototype captures
both function and appearance of the
intended design. It may be created in
with a different method and scale from
final design.
Swot analysis. Is a structured planning method used to
evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and
threats involved in a project or in a business venture. A Swot
analysis can be carried out for a product, place, industry or
person. It involves specifying the objective of the business
venture or project and identifying the internal and external
factors that are favorable and unfavorable to achieve that
objective. The degree to which the internal environment
of the firm matches with the external environment is
expressed by the concept of strategic fit.
• Strengths: characteristics of the
business or project that give it an
advantage over others.
• Weaknesses: characteristics that
place the business or project at a
disadvantage relative to others.
• Opportunities: elements that the
project could exploit to its advantage.
• Threats:
elements
in
the
environment that could cause
trouble for the business or project.
Visualizing data. Is viewed by many disciplines as a
modern equivalent of visual communication. It is not
owned by any one field, but rather finds interpretation
across many. It involves the creation and study of the visual
representation of data, meaning information that has been
abstracted in some schematic form, including attributes
or variables for the units of information. A primary goal of
data visualization is to communicate information clearly
and efficiently to users via the statistical graphics, plots,
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information graphics, tables, and charts selected. Effective
visualization helps users in analyzing and reasoning about
data and evidence. It makes complex data more accessible,
understandable and usable.
6. Business plan. Is a strategic management and lean startup
template for developing new or documenting existing
business models. It is a visual chart with elements describing
a firm’s or product’s value proposition, infrastructure,
customers, and finances. It assists firms in aligning their
activities by illustrating potential trade-offs.
7. Demo video. Imaging is to capture the enemy language
to communicate with the parties. Planning to video if you
can also create a form in advance to take advantage of the
storyboard, to predict there may be difficult cases to take
the actual situation. To some extent, while planning a long
shooting video contains some content when contemplating
whether to be useful, to edit the video to only simple
shooting recall that it is more advantageous in terms of
cost to. Meetings or groups when you capture a wealth of
information and activities to show the video to others you
can see a very strong side effects, effective or something yes
we can suggest a new perspective for sure not
8. Empathy map. Good design is grounded in a deep
understanding of the person for whom you are designing.
Designers have many techniques for developing this sort of
empathy. An Empathy Map is one tool to help you synthesize
your observations and draw out unexpected insights.
9. Survey. The survey research design is a very valuable tool
for assessing opinions and trends. Even on a small scale,
such as local government or small businesses, judging
opinion with carefully designed surveys can dramatically
change strategies.
10.Brainstorming. Brainstorming is a great way to come up
with a lot of ideas that you would not be able to generate
by just sitting down with a pen and paper. The intention of
brainstorming is to leverage the collective thinking of the
group, by engaging with each other, listening, and building
on other ideas. Conducting a brainstorm also creates
a distinct segment of time when you intentionally turn
up the generative part of your brain and turn down the
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evaluative part. Brainstorming can be used throughout a
design process; of course to come up with design solutions,
but also any time you are trying to come up with ideas,
such as planning where to do empathy work, or thinking
about product and services related to your project as two
examples.
11.Interview. Time with users is precious; you need to
make the most of it! While we always must allow room
for the spontaneous, blissful serendipity of a user-guided
conversation, we should never abdicate our responsibility
to prepare for interviews. Especially in following up
with users (after testing, etc), it is imperative to plan your
interviews. You may not get to every question you prepare,
but you should come in with a plan for engagement.
12.Shadowing. Shadowing originated out of 1950’s
Management Studies and Henry Minzberg’s 1970’s iterations
on structured observation. Contextualized information
about how, when and why people act is needed to generate
understanding of human need and to develop meaningful
insights for innovation. Traditional observation and diary
studies do not provide the same depth of contextual
information or detail about purpose that is achieved
through the shadowing method. Shadowing provides a
rich, comprehensive data set about the patterns of actions,
interdependence and motivations of users. Shadowing is
used to gain understanding of an individual’s behavior,
opinions and drivers as well as to understand a person’s
role and paths through an organization or interactions
with other objects or people in a given setting. It is used in
organizational change assessment, product marketing or
positioning, and experience and service design.
13.User observation. Observational research is particularly
prevalent in the social sciences and in marketing. It is a social
research technique that involves the direct observation of
phenomena in their natural setting. It is typically divided into
nonparticipant observation, and participant observation.
Cases studies and archival research are special types of
observational research. Nonparticipant observation it is
simply studying behaviors that occur naturally in natural
contexts, where there is no attempt to manipulate variables.
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It permits measuring what behavior is really like. However,
its typical limitations consist in its incapability exploring
the actual causes of behaviors, and the impossibility to
determine if a given observation is truly representative of
what normally occurs.
14.Field research. A field research method whereby the
researcher develops an understanding of the composition
of a particular setting or society by taking part in the
everyday routines and rituals alongside its members.
Originally developed in the early 20th century by
anthropologists researching native societies in developing
countries; now employed by researchers studying a range
of issues.
15.“what if ”. Designers rely on personal communication and,
particularly, feedback, during design work. You request
feedback from users about your solution concepts, and you
seek feedback from colleagues about design frameworks
you are developing. Outside the project itself, fellow
designers need to communicate how they are working
together as a team. Feedback is best given with I statements.
“What if” is a simple tool to encourage open feedback.
16.Desk research. In design research, the methods and
data collected differ from those emphasized in market
or academic research. Ethnographic approaches to
participant interaction clarifies complex human needs,
behaviors, and perspectives. Field immersions unearth
contextual and environmental factors that shape user
experience. Rigorous, old-fashioned desk research and
expert consultation support the fieldwork. But let’s be
clear: good design research doesn’t end with good data.
17.Challenge framing. One way in which we deal with the
complexity of the world is to make assumptions about
many things. Our pattern-matching ability is a great help
in allowing us to take short cuts but it often ends up in
us not noticing many things. If we do not take, deliberate
and conscious action, our subconscious will let many
assumptions pass by unnoticed.
18.Competitive analysis. Competitive analysis, as the name
implies, is an exploration of the companies in a given
industry sector or market niche that are competing with
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your company’s products or services for market share.
The analysis may be an in-depth exploration of the top
five competitors, or a larger number of competitors
could be. In most cases, the client will have identified
the target competitors for you. The primary benefits of
any competitive analysis are a better understanding of
what your competitors are doing, what they are offering
to customers, and how to maintain your competitive
advantage. The findings from this analysis are likely to
factor strongly into your own company’s strategic planning.
However, this is definitely not the only take-away from the
process of analyzing competitors.
19.Role play. By getting out of your own character, you are
also mentally getting out of your own way of thinking.
By getting into another person (in the way that an actor
does), you take on that person’s characteristics and find
it easier to think like them. Moving the way they move
helps the association also. Getting into another character
also legitimizes thinking differently, helping you to feel ok
about “acting strangely”.
20.Storyboard. The storyboard is a tool derived from the
cinematographic tradition; it is the representation of
use cases through a series of drawings or pictures, put
together in a narrative sequence. The service storyboard
shows the manifestation of every touchpoints and the
relationships between them and the user in the creation
of the experience.
21.Offering map. The aim of an offering map is to describe in
a synthetic way what the service offers to its users. There
is not a standard format for this tool: the offering could
be described by words or could be illustrated by images,
but most frequently, it is visualized through a graph. This
instrument could support the elaboration of the service
idea as well the development of some specific solutions,
it could be a tool for the implementation of the concept
but also for the communication of the service to the final
user. In each one of these situations, the offering map
will assume different configurations and languages with
reference to the specific aims and receivers involved.
22.System map. The system map is a visual description of
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the service technical organization: the different actors
involved, their mutual links and the flows of materials,
energy, information and money through the system.
System mapping is a useful method for both planning and
evaluating efforts that aim to change systems –that is, how
people and organizations relate. Systems efforts might, for
example, try to change or improve the way in which an
organization functions, create collaborative relationships
or networks, or change the context or environment in
which social change occurs.
23.Sketching together. The group sketching is a quick,
fast and economic tool for developing and explaining
ideas simultaneously. It is used during the co-design
sessions in order to share the insights inside the team:
this tool offers a common ground for the discussion even
when the participants have different cultural and social
backgrounds. It is based on basic and simple drawings in
order to encourage the participation of everybody.
24.Touchpoint map. Conceived by Gianluca Brugnoli
-teacher at Politecnico di Milano and designer at Frog
Design- the touchpoints matrix merges some features
of the customer journey maps with some features of the
system maps and is based on the use of personas. The basic
idea is to provide a visual framework that enables designer
to “connect the dots of the user experience” in order to
see the different configurations, interfaces, contexts and
results of the interaction with a specific product-service
system. The matrix is built by listing vertically the different
devices or contexts that are part of the system and by
listing horizontally the main actions that are supported by
the system itself. Once this structure has been composed,
the designer can put a specific persona inside and imagine
his journey through the different touchpoints, connecting
the related dots. In this way the matrix brings to a deeper
comprehension of the interaction and facilitates a further
development of the opportunities given by the system -of
the possible entry points and paths- shifting the focus of the
design activities to connections: “Design for connections: in
the system scenario, design is mainly focused on finding the
connections with the whole network, than in creating closed
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and self-sufficient systems, tools and services. Connections
are social and cultural assets, other than technical.”
25.Mockup. The mock up is a model, an illustration or a
collage describing an idea. At the beginning of the design
process, the mock up is mainly made through the use of
photomontages, created with photos of existing situations,
products or services combined with other elements.
During the next phases the mock up get more and more
realistic, till they become real prototypes representing the
main features of the project.
26.Service blueprint. The blueprint is an operational tool
that describes the nature and the characteristics of the
service interaction in enough detail to verify, implement
and maintain it. It is based on a graphical technique that
displays the process functions above and below the line of
visibility to the customer: all the touchpoints and the backstage processes are documented and aligned to the user
experience.
27.Mind map. The mind map is a tool for the visual elicitation
of our thoughts and their conations. The visualization
begins with a problem or an idea put in the center of the
representation. Then signs, lines, words and drawings are
used in order to build a system of thoughts around the
starting point. The hand and the mind work simultaneously.
• Use it to explore and develop ideas for a
specific problem.
• Use it to think, doodle and see where it takes
you.
• Use it to take notes during discussions,
lectures and conferences.
• Use it to summarize books and papers.
28.Mood board. A mood board is a visual composition of
pictures and materials that propose an atmosphere by
giving the generic perception of it. The mood board helps
in the elicitation of some values the service has that are
difficult to be described by words. The use of a visual
representation fixes univocally the perception of the
service inside the team.
29.Personas. The personas are archetypes built after an
exhaustive observation of the potential users. Each persona
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is based on a fictional character whose profile gathers up the
features of an existing social group. In this way, the personas
assume the attributes of the groups they represent: from
their social and demographic characteristics, to their own
needs, desires, habits and cultural backgrounds.
30.Experience prototype. The experience prototype is a
simulation of the service experience that foresees some of
its performances through the use of the specific physical
touchpoints involved. The experience prototype allows
designers to show and test the solution through an active
participation of the users. The service prototype is a tool
for testing the service by observing the interaction of
the user with a prototype of the service put in the place,
situation and condition where the service will actually
exist. The aim is verifying what happens when some
external factors interfere during the service delivery,
factors that it’s not possible to verify during the preceding
tests in the laboratory but that have a great impact on the
user perception and experience.
31.Customer journey map. The customer journey map is
an oriented graph that describes the journey of a user by
representing the different touchpoints that characterize
his interaction with the service. In this kind of visualization,
the interaction is described step by step as in the classical
blueprint, but there is a stronger emphasis on some aspects
as the flux of information and the physical devices involved.
At the same time there is a higher level of synthesis than
in the blueprint: the representation is simplified trough
the loss of the redundant information and of the deepest
details
32.Five sense. Our perceptions of the world are built on
multiple senses. They interact to help us make sense of our
surroundings, so a car will seem to be traveling faster if it
makes a lot of noise. And whether we want to buy a sports
car, or a vacuum cleaner, it’s our multi-sensory impression
of a product or service that dictates how we feel about it.
So we could use sound, scent, and taste when tackling a
design challenge. Perhaps a cohesive approach with all our
senses considered would make our spaces more creative,
joyful, and experiential.
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After shape and describe these 32 tools for generate new ideas I
exploring the world of upcycle and sustainable thinking, where I
try to define the pillars for doing the upcycle project, because the
consumption habits of modern consumer lifestyles are causing
a huge worldwide waste problem. Having overfilled local landfill
capacities, many first world nations are now exporting their refuse
to third world countries. This is having a devastating impact on
ecosystems and cultures throughout the world. Some alternative
energy companies are developing new ways to recycle waste by
generating electricity from landfill waste and pollution. This pillar
is useful to keep in mind that when design a new product or service,
is matter also to design the energy that will use during the process.
So, what does it mean for a material or a product to be sustainable?
There are few absolute answers to this, but there are basic questions
to ask as a starting point to assess the sustainability of any material.
1. What is its real value -- for initial use and long term?
2. Does it provide optimal performance for its application?
3. Is it widely available?
4. How ubiquitous are the source materials? Or, do they
regenerate and how quickly?
5. What is needed to process it into a usable form? Did this
process produce/release toxins or destroy habitat?
6. How much energy and water did it take to make it?
7. How much waste material did it generate?
8. What does it need to operate – maintenance inputs,
operating energy?
9. Were the people involved in producing, delivering, and
installing it fairly compensated?
10.Were they provided with safe and healthy working
conditions?
11.How long will it last?
12.What happens at the end of its service life?
As I showed in the picture that I design, during the process does
not exist a precise moment in which is correct use the pillars but
are following the flow of design process. In fact, the goal of the eco
pillars cards is using much more sustainable pillars as possible
inside the design project. The eco pillars are 16:
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1. Local
2.
productions. This pillar aims to promote local
sourcing through the branding of local makers or producers
and awareness raising of the role of the different actors along
the products’ supply chain. As well as providing, end users
with better knowledge and information on local products.
The local production also works on strengthening links
between the future product and other primary producers
in the area and enhancing their market opportunities.
Use a local production is important to guarantee some
advantages. Working with a domestic manufacturer makes
the communication process easy. Real time phone and
in-person conversations result in a better understanding
of the specifics of your product. Language barriers, time
zone differences and long overseas flights are eliminated.
For example, a small scale production in the U.S. eliminates
the waste of unneeded products otherwise made just to
meet overseas minimums. Simplifying and controlling
the development and manufacturing process will reduce
thousands of waste garments by ensuring each item is
wearable, fits properly and remains sellable. There are
warehouses upon warehouses full of obsolete inventory
and rejected goods. Manufacturing in the U.S. offers a
sustainable approach.
Disposables. Do you really need a disposable part? Or, can
you design a second life for it? Is considered throwaway,
something you use once and dump, regardless of the life
that may be left in it. As a frugal shopper with a concern
for the state of our environment, that just won’t do. The
final output is important will not use only one time but
have a long life. Things usually have two sides. However,
when it comes to the disadvantages, I think the advantages
outweigh the disadvantages of disposable items. Firstly,
disposable items pollute environment greatly, such as
disposable chopsticks. Chopsticks in many hotels are
disposable. This kind of chopstick is made of wood. There
are many hotels use the chopsticks throughout the country
every day. Such as statistics, we must cut down a forest to
product the chopsticks. If it goes on like this, water and soil
of our country will loss so much. Then it will into a serious
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3.
4.
ecological imbalance. In addition, disposable plastic cups
and lunch boxes caused a lot of white pollution. It affects
the environmental pollution. The important thing is that
every one of us should take into account the present
environmental problems. We should consider about
environment and do what we do. Remember that we have
only one earth.
Zero waste. Is a philosophy that encourages the
redesign of resource life cycles so that all products are
reused. No trash is sent to landfills and incinerators. The
process recommended is one similar to the way that
resources are reused in nature. “Zero Waste is a goal that
is ethical, economical, efficient and visionary, to guide
people in changing their lifestyles and practices to emulate
sustainable natural cycles, where all discarded materials are
designed to become resources for others to use. Zero Waste
means designing and managing products and processes to
systematically avoid and eliminate the volume and toxicity
of waste and materials, conserve and recover all resources,
and not burn or bury them. Implementing Zero Waste will
eliminate all discharges to land, water or air that are a threat
to planetary, human, animal or plant health” (http: // zwia.
org / standards /zw –community-principles/) Zero Waste
refers to waste management and planning approaches
which emphasize waste prevention as opposed to end of
pipe waste management. It is a whole systems approach
that aims for a massive change in the way materials
flow through society, resulting in no waste. Zero waste
encompasses more than eliminating waste through
recycling and reuse, it focuses on restructuring production
and distribution systems to reduce waste. Zero waste is
more of a goal or ideal rather than a hard target.
Dematerializations. The dematerialization of a product
literally means less. No material is used to deliver the same
level of functionality to the user. Sharing, borrowing and
the organization of group services that facilitate and cater
for communities needs could alleviate the requirement of
ownership of many products. In his book ‘‘In the Bubble:
designing in a complex world’’, John Thakara states that,
“the average consumer power tool is used for ten minutes in
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5.
its entire life but it takes hundreds of times its own weight
to manufacture such an object” (John Thackara, In the
Bubble: Designing in a Complex World; Cambridge, Mass:
MIT Press, 2005.) A product service system with shared
tools could simply offer access to them when needed.
This shift from a reliance on products to services is the
process of dematerialization. Digital music distribution
systems, car clubs, bike hire schemes and laundry services
are all examples of dematerialization. “Servicizing”
is a transaction through which value is provided by
a combination of products and services in which the
satisfaction of customer needs is achieved either by selling
the function of the product rather than the product itself,
or by increasing the service component of a product offer.
The concept is based on the idea that what customers want
from products is not necessarily ownership, but rather
the function that the product provides or the service the
product can deliver.
Reuse materials. How waste materials could became
a row material for a new project? The most effective
way to reduce waste is to not create it in the first place.
Making a new product requires many materials and
energy raw materials must be extracted from the earth,
and the product must be fabricated then transported
to wherever it will be sold. As a result, reduction and
reuse are the most effective ways you can save natural
resources, protect the environment and save money.
Often we do not realize that the waste materials are the
raw materials of the future. When designing you can start
from the reuse of certain materials that will become the
basis of the project. The upcycle technique is based on this
approach. In contrast, recycling is the breaking down of
the used item into raw materials which are used to make
new items and has certain potential advantages: energy
and raw materials savings as replacing many single use
products with one reusable one reduces the number that
need to be manufactured. Reduced disposal needs and
costs. Refurbishment can bring sophisticated, sustainable,
well paid jobs to underdeveloped economies. Cost savings
for business and consumers as a reusable product is often
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6.
7.
cheaper than the many single use products it replaces.
Some older items were better handcrafted and appreciate
in value.
Mixed materials. A sustainable product that in the future
will be designed for a new life must take into account, the
union of different materials could make it impossible reuse
the product in the future design project. For example,
the use of glues or the union of different plastic material
makes the material unusable. For this is important during
the process, consider what type of materials you are using
and how you plan to join them in the final product. When
paper is recycled, it’s all mixed together into a pulp. That
pulp is washed, cleaned, and then pressed into new paper
sheets. During that process, wastes like paper fibers, inks,
cleaning chemicals, and dyes are filtered out into one giant
pudding known as paper sludge. The sludge is then either
burned or sent to a landfill, where it can leach dozens of
toxic chemicals and heavy metals into groundwater. If you
think that there would be regulations against that, you’d
be right. However, there is one loophole: mixing anything
else with the paper sludge, even just sand, turns it from
waste into a product. Moreover, there are no regulations
against tossing tens of thousands of tons of your product
into a landfill.
Less packaging. How can we minimize the amount of
packaging we use? How can we make more of it recyclable?
How can we source more materials from natural, renewable
resources? How can we get away from petroleum-based
packaging? There are many positive examples of products
where the packaging not only be a temporary function but
reoccurs as an essential part of the product, in other cases
it is proposed in a natural key made from scrap materials;
make it reusable eliminating waste or to design the product
as a storage unit with the most minimal amount of waste.
For examples, Y water is an organic, low calorie drink filled
with nutritional co-factors for kids. Here’s a good example
of a product with packaging so clever, it isn’t likely to be
thrown away. In fact, the manufacturer encourages kids
to keep the unique interlocking packaging to play with.
The bottles come with “Y knots”, large rubber bands that
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8.
kids can use to connect them to build unique designs
unlimited by anything except their imaginations. Love this
concept for packaging. The criteria presented here blend
broad sustainability and industrial ecology objectives
with business considerations and strategies that address
the environmental concerns related to the life cycle of
packaging made by the Sustainable Packaging Coalition®
(SPC).
• Is beneficial, safe & healthy for
individuals
and
communities
throughout its life cycle
• Meets market criteria for performance
and cost
• Is sourced, manufactured, transported,
and recycled using renewable energy
• Optimizes the use of renewable or
recycled source materials
• Is manufactured using clean production
technologies and best practices
• Is made from materials healthy
throughout the life cycle
• Is physically designed to optimize
materials and energy
• Is effectively recovered and utilized in
biological and/or industrial closed loop
cycles
Modularity. Is the degree to which a system’s components
may be separated and recombined in a Modular design,
or “modularity in design”, is a design approach that
subdivides a system into smaller parts called modules
or skids that can be independently created and then
used in different systems. A modular system can be
characterized by functional partitioning into discrete
scalable, reusable modules, rigorous use of well-defined
modular interfaces, and making use of industry standards
for interfaces. Besides reduction in cost, and flexibility
in design, modularity offers other benefits such as
augmentation (adding new solution by merely plugging
in a new module), and exclusion. Examples of modular
systems are cars, computers, process systems, solar panels
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and wind turbines, elevators and modular buildings.
Earlier examples include looms, railroad signaling
systems, telephone exchanges, pipe organs and electric
power distribution systems. Computers use modularity
to overcome changing customer demands and to make
the manufacturing process more adaptive to change.
Modular design is an attempt to combine the advantages
of standardization (high volume normally equals low
manufacturing costs) with those of customization.
9. Longevity. Predict specific longevity of a product life cycle
is difficult; businesses want a general idea of the expected
length of the life cycle for optimized production and
marketing planning. Technology life cycles tend to unfold
quickly as competition intensifies and technology evolves.
Longevity is important factor because avoid the need to
produce many products that have to became waste very
soon.
10.Efficiently. Is the ability to avoid wasting materials,
energy, efforts, money, and time in doing something or in
producing a desired result. In a more general sense, it is the
ability to do things well, successfully, and without waste.
In more mathematical or scientific terms, it is a measure
of the extent to which input is well used for an intended
task or function (output). It often specifically comprises
the capability of a specific application of effort to produce
a specific outcome with a minimum amount or quantity of
waste, expense, or unnecessary effort. Efficiency of course
refers to very different inputs and outputs in different
fields and industries.
11.Life cycle. How all the Life cycle will be sustainable for the
environment? The product life cycle is a well-established
marketing concept that helps companies understand the
typical progression of products in the marketplace and
helps them determine marketing strategies. The life cycle
runs from an initial product launch through completion of
the life cycle at the point the product becomes obsolete.
The four stages of the life cycle are introduction, growth,
maturity and decline. At introduction, the product is
launched. During the growth phase, sales growth builds
sharply. At maturity, sales typically plateau. During decline,
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the product nears its relevant end and a new version or
upgrade is often introduced. n industry, product lifecycle
management (PLM) is the process of managing the entire
lifecycle of a product from inception, through engineering
design and manufacture, to service and disposal of
manufactured products. PLM integrates people, data,
processes and business systems and provides a product
information backbone for companies and their extended
enterprise. PLM systems help organizations in coping with
the increasing complexity and engineering challenges
of developing new products for the global competitive
markets.
12.Share goods. Sharing economy or collaborative
consumption refers to peer-to-peer-based sharing of
access to goods and services (coordinated through
community-based online services). Sharing economy
can take a variety of forms, including using information
technology to provide individuals, corporations, nonprofits and governments with information that enables
the optimization of resources through the redistribution,
sharing and reuse of excess capacity in goods and
services. There are three main types of collaborative
consumption: Product-service system, goods that are
privately owned can be shared or rented out via peer-topeer marketplaces. Redistribution markets, a system of
collaborative consumption is based on used or pre-owned
goods being passed on from someone who does not want
them to someone who does want them. This is another
alternative to the more common ‘reduce, reuse, recycle,
repair’ methods of dealing with waste. Collaborative
lifestyles, this system is based on people with similar needs
or interests banding together to share and exchange lesstangible assets such as time, space, skills, and money.
13.No toxic materials. Toxic materials are substances that
may cause harm to an individual if it enters the body.
Are not good for the environmental. Toxic materials may
enter the body in different ways. These ways are called
the route of exposure. During the process, it is important
to take in account: the material using during the process,
the material chosen for the product finished is not toxic,
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or which produce toxic substances. Often it happens that
toxic substances are used, or that are produced during
machining. Contamination is one of the biggest obstacles
in the recycling industry right now. If there are impurities
or toxins on the original material say lead paint from an
aluminum spray can they will usually make it through the
recycling process and end up buried in the new product,
which might turn out to be, say, a soda can. The worst
part is that sometimes we don’t know when something’s
contaminated until it’s too late. For example, we’re just
realizing that hundreds of buildings in Taiwan made from
recycled steel have been giving people gamma radiation
poisoning and not the good kind for the past twelve years.
14.Change behaviors. Tackling environmental issues
requires change at every level. Even within large powerful
organisations change has to begin with someone acting
differently. Behavioral change isn’t enough on its own,
but it is vital. Behavioral change theories are attempts
to explain why behaviors change, the behaviors could
influence the good habits of the people. These theories cite
environmental, personal, and behavioral characteristics as
the major factors in behavioral determination. Sometimes
highlighting financial benefits can instigate behavioral
change. But decisions based on economic motives alone
can be problematic. Human behavior underlies almost all
environmental problems, such as air and water pollution,
climate change, deforestation, and loss of biodiversity.
Research in psychology offers clues as to why people
engage in unsustainable behaviors despite their concern
about the broader consequences. At the same time, the
research also explains why people go out of their way to
behave sustainably, and how it is possible to motivate and
empower sustainable actions. The goal of the psychology
of sustainable behavior is to create the conditions that
make sustainable action the most appealing or natural
choice.
15.Eco materials. What is a Sustainable Material? This pillar
is important in the definition phase of product or service
because it has as a goal to increase the knowledge of the
world of sustainable materials, also defined eco-materials.
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Eco-design is an approach to designing product with
special consideration for the environmental impacts
of the product during its whole lifecycle. In a life cycle
assessment, the life cycle of a product is usually divided
into procurement, manufacture, use, and disposal. Ecodesign is a growing responsibility and understanding of
our ecological footprint on the planet. Green awareness,
overpopulation, industrialization and an increased
environmental population have led to the questioning
of consumer values. It is imperative to search for new
building solutions that are environmentally friendly and
lead to a reduction in the consumption of materials and
energy. There are a number of tools and frameworks
for evaluating sustainability in materials, in business
practices, in urban planning, in construction, contribute
to sustainability in many respects, and in others these tools
are helping the industry set goals to foster improvements
in their practices and their product lines to advance global
progress towards a more sustainable society.
16.Unrepairable. Products must be durable, easy and
affordable to repair, and information on these aspects
must be clearly available to consumers. This will help
the environment, the economy and society as a whole. If
products last longer and are better repairable, their early
replacement by new products can be avoided. This way,
the depletion of natural resources is reduced. Apart from
this, value is maintained, since finished products have
more economic value than the raw materials inside them.
If repair and maintenance services become cheaper, new,
green jobs can be created. All this will stimulate a more
sustainable consumption pattern and will lead society as
a whole towards a circular economy. A disposable lifestyle
and mentality is certainly not a problem in emerging
markets, where the ability to repair a product is expected,
and anything not designed with this in mind will almost
certainly fail. This is more than just economic necessity.
Though economics have been a factor in preserving the
DIY mindset, there is a deeper, cultural tradition rooted in
the sense of pride and satisfaction that comes from being
able to fix things that are broken.
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17.Energy waste. The energy is an important part for create
a sustainable product. In fact when the designer star to
think about the product rarely happen that he or she take
care also about how many energy the product need during
the process, or how many energy the product could spend
during the life cycle. Therefore, the questions that we
have to answer is: how could reduce energy waste in this
project? How may energy the product could spend during
the life cycle? Because there are different type of energy:
chemical, mechanical, and human. Every energy have a
cost and affect the environment. How the energy could
became something positive for the environment? There
are a lot of renewable energy you could start to think
about it. Sustainable energy is energy obtained from nonexhaustible resources. By definition, sustainable energy
serves the needs of the present without compromising
the ability of future generations to meet their needs.
Technologies that promote sustainable energy include
renewable energy sources, such as hydroelectricity, solar
energy, wind energy, wave power, geothermal energy,
bioenergy, tidal power and technologies designed to
improve energy efficiency.
4.4 What, when, where and how use UpKit
WHAT: Upkit, it is a kit for the design and generation of knowledge
in the field of upcycle. For using this kit you have to adding some
simple tools such as post-it, pen ruler, and other things that are
useful during the designing phase. The main tool is a deck of cards
that need to guide the designer during the design process assisted
by a portable booklet with the explanation of the different tools
included in the cards. I have also created a series of maps that are
used to explain and focus the different parts of the project such as
business, the idea etc. Finally, I created an insert that contains cues
to increase the knowledge of the method of upcycle.
13.Deck
of cards. The deck consist in fifth-three squared
(the same dimension of the post-it) cards divided through
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uc
Jessy Rochulos | 43 years old | Segnor Design Strategist
ecess
R
e |4
years old
|
ie Designer
y
Meggy is following a course of Innovation
Studio at Tongji University and the
professor asks a brief about create an
innovative and sustainable ideas by reusing
the waste of a local company supplies
e ess
The professor Yang Bo few weeks before
starting this course, was aware of UpKit
through a conference, and bought it
online at www.UpKit.com
Re
he
se
He prepared the lesson using the Insert
upcycle magazine contained in kit
ocess
he s e
ec c
e s
s
he c
he
ool c
Finally, the Jessy group start to design
using the tools chosen from the deck of
cards by creating a custom process path
uy o l
e
e
lo
o e
sou
ce
ols
he e
he
co
s
Second she chose the cards tools, using
the light blue cards and following the
instruction book provided by the toolkit
of the teacher or in the website
hoose
o
h
e
s
he
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ll
s
Luca Ravenna | 47 years old | Chief Designer
Necessity
Luca must create a new collection of
children books for EF for this reason he
move from London to Milan in the
consultants design studio DINN!
Jessy Rochulos | 43 years old | Segnor Design Strategist
1
Awareness
2
3
Improve the awareness
thanks the Up Insert
Luca used the Insert upcycle magazine
for create a basic knowledge on the
topic of the upcycle.
4
Jessy is a signor Design Strategist for
DINN! For many years, she using UpKit
cards to design new projects and involve
her design team
Sign up in the Up Blog
Jessy is inscribed to the blog of UpKit
where she published case studies of
projects in which she used this method
Spread the knowledge
about Up Kit
Jessy buy an UpKit for Luca, for preparing
him to the co-design workshop that will
be in Milan DINN! studio
5
6
Choose the tool cards
In the DINN! studio begin a session of co-design in which
together deciding the process, discussing the cards tools
to use and the eco pillars to achieve in the project
Print the Open-source
materials from web
Luca decided to print through the
website the toolkit for his colleagues
Sign up for news
It is sign up for the newsletter, to receive
information and updates cards
Use the process
designed with UpKit
Luca come back to London in his team to
work together in with the process
designed with Jessy in Milan
7
8
9
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4.5 Web site: open source aproach
In production and development, open source as a development
model promotes universal access via a free license to a product’s
design or blueprint, and universal redistribution of that design
or blueprint, including subsequent improvements to it by
anyone. Before the phrase open source became widely adopted,
developers and producers used a variety of other terms. Open
source gained hold with the rise of the Internet, and the attendant
need for massive retooling of the computing source code. Opening
the source code enabled a self-enhancing diversity of production
models, communication paths, and interactive communities. The
open-source software movement arose to clarify the environment
that the new copyright, licensing, domain, and consumer issues
created. For this project has been also designed online support,
based on a platform where it will be part of a blog with news from
the user and the server, a learning part where it is possible see
the explanation of each card and download the pdf about all the
deck cards. Finally, there will be the maps section where you can
download the maps pdf. I know the structure of the website will
be:
•
•
•
•
•
About us: where there will be an explained about how
this project was born, the goals it wants to achieve, who
supports it and is using it. Also will be clearly visible the
possibility to buy the UpKit
Blog: will be the online and interactive translation of the
Insert upcycle magazine contained in the toolkit, where
people can post articles and tap into knowledge provided
in this page.
Cards: This section will provide the contents of the deck
cards and instructions book. There is the possible to
contribute in the project by reporting tips and ideas.
Maps: the map notes is available online in this section
where, as in the cards page, there is the possibility to
contribute for improving the design of the project through
comments and ideas
Contact: This page will be dedicated to contacts UpKit
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5
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DESIGN:
TOUCH-POINTS
5.1 Design and graphic
The whole project is based on a scale of colors that includes three
main colors, the green that is linked to the world of sustainability
and upcycle, the blue that was chosen for its being neutral and
challenging indeed is used for the tools, and finally the purple, which
is then used as a color that contains the other two. The whole UpKit
is thought to be contained in an A4 size envelope. In fact, as you can
see from the illustration, the cards, the booklet portable and notes
with maps are contained in 29.7 * 21 cm, while the magazine is as big
as an A4.
LOGO: The main idea behind this logo is the concept of the
generation new sustainable ideas, for this reason I used the bulb but
dividing it with the three colors.
•
The process represents by the purple color using for the
bulb base, which is the root of the project.
•
The arrows blue represent two tools because in the project
are contained many cards tools but you have the possibility
to customize and create a personal phat for the project
(thirty-two).
•
The green arrow represents the eco pillar that will be driving
the designer for create a sustainable project.
•
In the pictures above, I highlighted the color palette used for the
logo, the possibility to do black and white and the main lines of
construction.
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CARD DECK: As I described in the previous chapter the card deck
is made up of three types of cards, the cards process, the tool cards
and eco pillars cards. Also in the deck will be an information leaflet.
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The dimension of the cards are 7.5 * 7.5 centimeters like a post it,
each card has an icon on the front or a number and a keyword with
a brief description.
•
Process card: The color palette of these cards are made
by five colors, in fact them contain the main colors of the
project.
The cards are on the front have a number indicating the number of
steps in the process with the keyword that identifies the content,
and a brief explanation on the back as a reminder.
•
Tools cards: for the cards tools I used the color scale in
shades of blue. Each card is on the front has an icon that
graphically summarizes the content, a keyword that is the
name of the tool and a brief description. On the back there
are some lines that are used to write personal thoughts to
remember how to use the card.
•
Eco pillars cards: the cards of the sustainable pillars are
sixteen and have the same characteristics as those of the
card tools. Created with the icon, the keyword and a short
description, also having them a blank space on the back
to customize the card. I used a color scale of the green
because it binds to the world of sustainability.
INSTRUCTIONS BOOK: The dimensions are designed because
it can be carried in your pocket. The sections of the book are
determined by the colors chosen for the process, tools and eco
pillars. The graphics of the book incorporates the colors and icons
of graphic cards. In addition using a neutral color such as white for
the introduction on upcycle and on UpKit.
MAP NOTES: Maps are around thirteen, each map is printed in
grayscale on thin sheets contained in a notebook, which thanks to
the hatch can be removed and used as a reminder or directly on the
paper in the empty spaces. I used the words in capital letters (Karla
regular font) to define the content, and the Times New Roman font
in italics to add brief explanations. In every page, there is the logo
in grayscale and the title of the map, written big.
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5.2 Pilot and prototyping
As an idea progresses from proof of concept testing through
multiple stages of rapid prototyping, there are a raft of challenges:
the feasibility of making the product, delivering the service, how
one would deal with particular issues or pinch-points, what the
economics look like and how it could be cheapened. The driving
principles at this stage are speed, keeping costs low, tangibility
and feedback loops from users and specialists. A Pilot uses the
full production system and tests it against a subset of the general
intended audience. The reason for doing a pilot is to get a better
understanding of how the product will be used in the field and to
refine the product. At this stage with regard to the prototyping of
the project I made a plan that provides two-steps of prototyping
and one of pilot.
•
•
•
•
The first step of prototyping focused on the readability of the
cards, if the user can read clearly the content on the cards. For
this, I have done a survey / interview by asking to the designers
to judge the aesthetics of the cards in terms of readability and
use. The result was that most of the people asked that the logos
on the cards were drawn larger for greater legibility of the
meaning of the symbol.
Second step prototyping covered the testing of maps to define
the size needed during the process. At this stage I discovered
that the maps can be contained in the notes, but often serve
as a reminder to be redesigned on a large wall, on a large sheet
of paper, to help all team members to participate in the design
process.
Prototyping of the project took place at Tongji, thanks to the
participation of a Iren student of Design of Tongji University
and a Federica student of the Polytechnic of Milan. In the
following pictures will show you step by step through the
process of using UpKit.
The last phase has not yet been implemented and includes
a pilot phase in Milan during a workshop held in a class of
designers at the Polytechnic of Milan. The goal will be to test
the entire process of idea generation using UpKit.
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Pilot protyping
Iren is a design student from
D&I in Tongji University
in Tongji Univrsity Shanghai
Federica is a service design
double degree student from
Polytechnic of Milan
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5.3 Feasibility of the project
With regard to the feasibility of this project, I made a business
model canvass to summarize key points that will allow the
realization. Indeed, Through the Business Model Canvas, create
the business model of a new company or redesign the business
model of their business becomes a participatory process, creative
and engaging. The feasibility of the UpKit project is the final phase
of the thesis design because is summarizes all the research and
analysis of competitors and the design phase. In the map you
can look the key partners of the project, that will be first all the
Universities in my specific case the Politecnico of Milan and Tongji
university, second the MethodKit platform. MethodKit are one of
the best company that provide a deck of tool cards for design they
have a lot of deck according for different fields, for this reason I
choose them such as Key partners.
Fig. 5.10 - Upkit business model canvas
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CONCL
192
USIONS
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My research phase is an important part of this project and lasted
more than six months. Starting from the pillars of sustainability to
touch my own experiences in the field of upcycle. Already during
my academic career I found myself interested in this method, as
the great authors of sustainability, I foresee is a method that will
help the future of our planet.
The aim of this thesis is to analyze the world of upcycle and methods
of generating new ideas during the design process. As for the
design method after a careful analysis of the various techniques I
have concluded that the decks for the design are a reliable method
that allow the involvement of the work group during the design,
stimulate open discussion and guide the designer to structure a
linear process by setting goals.
During my design process I made a questionnaire to verify the need
for a tool that would help generate innovative ideas, I also have to
verify personally spending my spare time through workshops and
conferences in the field of upcycle.
The outcome of this thesis is a tool kit, which is, composed of
various elements not simply a deck of cards. Inside there are also
by a series of maps that are used to synthesize the different process
steps, a book with detailed explanations of each card and finally
an insert that contains key information about the upcycle which
has the function of generating a base knowledge, and to give some
ideas for further personal study. The next steps in relation to this
project will implement a pilot phase in Milan during a workshop
to test the entire process and contact the key partners to verify the
feasibility of Upkit.
Last but not least, this project would not have been possible
without the help and support from my two tutors, Weqing Yang,
professor of Tongji University and Francesco Zurlo professor at
Milan Polytechnic.
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APPE
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NDIX
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1. PRODUCT SERVICE SYSTEM DESIGN
APPROACH
Product service systems means that the society change from
a focus on producing and consuming products to a society where
the service components are increasingly replacing the more
traditional material intensive ways of product manifestation, that
provides individuals and organizations with the possibility to
fulfil needs through the provision of more dematerialized system
solutions. The concept of the product-service system has its own
history that reflects the development of our understanding of the
production systems of our society; the society went from focusing
on production systems to products. So if we want make a resume
about what is PSS design we can say:
•
a pre-designed combination of products and services in a
market that can fulfil consumers’ needs; and
•
a dematerialized solution to consumer needs and
preferences;
•
a result of rethinking of the product value chain and ways
of delivering utility to customers that will have a smaller
environmental impact than separate products and
services outside the system.
For consumers, product service systems mean a shift from buying
products to buying services and system solutions that will minimize
the environmental impacts of consumer needs and wants, and
this requires a higher level of involvement and awareness. For
producers and service providers, product-service systems mean
a higher degree of responsibility for the product’s full life cycle,
the early involvement of consumers in the design of the product
service system, and design of the service system for the. This
utility-based consumption is finding increased application in
professional markets where companies are looking less for prestige
and status from the products they buy (as is the case with private
customers), and more for cost effectiveness and functionality.
For both consumers and producers, product-service systems
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might sometimes involve a change in property rights. In general,
product-service systems give more attention to the usage phase of
the product’s life cycle (consumer stage), than other methods of
environmental policy and management, except for eco-labelling
the ultimate goal of which is to provide information and advice on
environmental characteristics of products. The paramount goal of
product-service systems is to minimize environmental impact of
consumption by:
•
reducing consumption through alternative schemes of
product use;
•
Increasing
overall
resource
productivity
dematerialization of product service systems.
and
The product service system design approach is made by three basic
factors. The first that the project cannot be limited to the product
but must be a system that takes into account the life cycle and is
concerned that the actors interact with the system. The second
includes a sustainable approach to the project, but with a dual
aspect. First sustainable common view that should not damaging
the environment and the second in a perspective of sustainable
life cycle. Third factor I identified with the keyword “Future” or
that we should not only plan for the present, but that the present
is the starting point and then the job of the designer is to imagine
and design a possible future using design thinking method that is
the base method. Design thinking is a formal method for practical,
creative resolution of problems and creation of solutions, with
the intent of an improved future result. In this regard, it is a
form of solution-based or solution-focused thinking starting
with a goal (a better future situation) instead of solving a specific
problem. By considering both present and future conditions and
parameters of the problem, alternative solutions may be explored
simultaneously. Design thinking identifies and investigates with
both known and ambiguous aspects of the current situation in
order to discover hidden parameters and open alternative paths,
which may lead to the goal. Because design thinking is iterative,
intermediate “solutions” are also potential starting points of
alternative paths, including redefining of the initial problem. All
the work of my thesis started to plan the timeline about the three
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App. Fig. 1 - Diagram of approach
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different phase that I use to follow when I am approaching a new
challenge. The image represent is dived by the months and in the
right side, there are all the tools that I used during the process.
2. UPCYCLE DEFINITION
Since creative processes are always better when they are
collaborative, it could sound odd that it is hard for designers to
collaborate in a team without a clear hierarchy, but if we consider
the basic design workflow, we can notice how open collaboration
doesn’t happen in the same way during the whole process. Whereas
the innovative upcycler would take the plastic bottles, paint each
individual bottle a unique color, bolt them together in a spiral shape
to construct a creative and stylist lampshade. Recycling has the
focus on reusing old items or reusing the merchandise materials to
create a new product. Upcycling will take an old item and make it
more desirable by using a little imagination. Upcycled items often
sell for a much higher value than the original cost of the reused
item, whereas recycled items usually drop in value. The new boost
in upcycling in wealthy countries has little to do with money and
more to do with creativity and the positive environmental impact
upcycling has. More than ever, we are aware of our impact on the
earth. Landfills bury the rubbish we throw away as our unwanted
items are replaced by new goods. These new products have to
be produced using new resources taken from nature. There has
been a turn in the tide and consumers want to know where our
goods and products come from. We are concerned that our recent
buys are not supporting the environment and we are happy to pay
more for upcycled and recycled goods. Often upcycled pieces are
unique, which in a flush economy increases the value and desire
for the product. Some of the most mass production fashion brands
start to think how upcycle could be not a unique product but a
mass productive products, and so are born new collections based
on this method.
When discussing upcycling it’s easy to think about an old bottle
of beer being used as a candle holder. But upcycling can be much
more extreme then this simple example. In 2011 architect David
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Hertz purchased the remains of a Boeing 747 aircraft before turning
it into an expensive and sought after Malibu home. Originally
aero planes cost between £1-3 million, but by the time the plane
is decommissioned the scrap value is only around £15,000-to£20,000 mark, with most decommissioned planes ending in
the scrap yard. In 2014 Channel 4’s Supersized Salvage TV show
worked alongside Arizona’s AvAir and Sycamore Aviation to
complete a major upcycling project to raise money for a children’s
cancer charity. The challenge was to upcycle every single piece
of the plane including the external shell and internal fitting; the
seats, cockpit, overhead lockers and the wiring into new sellable
items. Channel 4 hired three designers who came up with a range
of innovative ideas from the potential scrap metal. The designers
created a vast ray of items from a garden office made from the
plane’s fuselage to chairs and sofas fashioned from the curved
edge of the plane’s wings. Overhead lockers were tuned into kids
toy boxes and bird’s nesting boxes were made out of air ducts.
The upcycling challenge sold all the pieces for a combined total
of £44,000 with air duct bird boxes selling for £45-£80, a rocking
chair selling for £250 and a staggering £650 for an upcycled desk
lamp. The profit was not the only end game as the potential land
filled waste that the plane could have created was now being used
and displayed in people’s home, having a considerable positive
impact on the environment.
Upcycling is highly popular in the art world, with upcycled pieces
selling for thousands of pounds. In 2013 sculptor Ichwan Noor
created a perfect sphere from an old 1953 VW Beetle, which sold
for an $88,000.
Cateura, Paraguay is a town built on a landfill, poverty in this area
is high with many families’ upcycling goods on a daily basis just
to survive. A local innovative musician took a new approach and
started to make imaginative musical instruments for children;
violins from oil drums, water pipe flutes and guitars made from
packing crates, before teaching them how to play these hand
crafted garbage instruments. From this they created the Landfill
Harmonic, who are now receiving worldwide acclaim performing
in locations across the globe; Amsterdam, Argentina, USA, Canada,
Palestine, Norway and Japan and London.
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Upcycling requires little energy, minimal resources and has a
fantastic environmental factor. Waste is often buried in landfill
sites producing methane and greenhouse gases. Once buried
the materials become unusable and once consumers demand a
new product factories and business have to supply, which often
requires collecting the resources and materials. In the home
upcycling has many rewards with minimal disadvantages. But
can it be achieved on an industrial level? Upcycling still requires
a manufacturing process, at home it’s our own two hands, a tin
of paint, a saw and screw driver. In the factory the operation has
to diverse from that of the individual upcycler. Energy and fuel
would be involved in an industrial upcycle plant, but compared to
the cost on the environment for mining the required ores it has a
better environmental factor. Upcycling isn’t simply re-using items,
upcycling makes the old items better, more useful and of better
quality with minimal impact on the environment. The increased
awareness of environmental responsibility and a slow economy has
led to a major increase in upcycling. The college student short on
cash may upcycle their out of fashion jeans by adding a few seams
and rips instead of buying a new pair all together. Homeowners
are looking for ways to renovate with salvaged, and in some cases,
free materials. The green mom on a budget may upcycle her old
clothes into clothes for her children. This innovative spirit and
environmental consciousness has led to upcycling in nearly all
areas of life. From green companies to your Mother’s kitchen,
people are looking to save money and the planet. Upcycling does
both. Upcycling is the process of converting old or discarded
materials into something useful and often beautiful, represents a
truly cyclical, balanced process that all industries and companies
should be aiming towards. At this point, just having the aim would
be another important step. All of our products could be drastically
changed if the beginning of their design started with the goal of
not having them end up in a landfill. A number of ways could be
utilities to train our economy into an inherent practice of reuse.
This process can be repeated in perpetuity of returning materials
back to a pliable, usable form without degradation to their latent
value moving resources back up the supply chain. Upcycling
becomes dually important. First, the practice reduces the amount
of waste that we produce and ultimately goes into the ground for
longer than any of us will be around. Secondly, it also reduces the
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need for new virgin material to be harvested as feedstock for new
generations of product. In the case of plastic, this means less oil
wells drilled. For metals, less mountains mined. For paper, less
trees felled. All around this means less expended energy. Two
general types of upcycling: In practical terms, upcycling seems to
have two subsets. The first is taking materials that today cannot be
practically recycled and making them into something useful. The
second is taking materials that can be recycled, but rather than
breaking down the item into their base elements and building up
something new, they are used in some version of their current
state. A good example is a glass bottle. When you recycle that
bottle, it is broken into small pieces, melted down, and recast
into a new item. Upcycling that same bottle could involve cutting
the top off, smoothing down the cut edge, and then using it as a
drinking glass, just as it is. In both cases, waste has been diverted
from the landfill, and in the second case, you have the added
benefit of having applied less energy to the base materials in order
to return it to something people will use.
“Upcycled” vs. “reused”: If you are rescuing an old bookcase from
the scrap heap, putting a new coat of paint on it, and using it again
as a book case, you are not technically “upcycling” that bookcase
because it was not made into anything new. It’s awesome that that
bookcase has not gone off to the landfill, but with apologies to the
many people that “upcycle” in this way, this is a reused item, not
an upcycled item. I understand the temptation to call it upcycled,
since it is a trendy word and the words “reused”.
Recycling has simply prolonged the inevitable by stretching out
our waste stream and made the lifecycle costs of the material a
bit less. Recycling takes consumer materials mostly plastic, paper,
metal, glass, and breaks them down so their base materials can
be remade into a new consumer product, often of lesser quality.
When you upcycle an item, you are not breaking down the
materials.
You may be refashioning it like cutting a t-shirt into strips of yarn
but it is still made of the same materials as when you started. In
addition, the upcycled item is typically better or the same quality
as the original. Some would say that upcycling must move goods
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or supplies up the supply chain while recycling does not. Others
would conclude that upcycling is a physical process and recycling
is a chemical process. Still other definitions state that for something
to be considered upcycled there must be an increase in worth or
quality. Because one can find truth in all of these explanations, we
use a broad definition that includes them all. Upcycling is taking
an item that is no longer needed or wanted and giving it new life
as something that is either useful or creative.
Different from using new materials, the design of industrial
waste in upcycling is very difficult, which requires designers of
good ability of vision and observation and pay more attention to
ecological industrial designing. And they also have to learn about
the industrial background of renewable resources. Besides, the
material used in upcycling is stricter and the collection system is
different from the traditional one. A popular one is designer-led
mode, which means the collecting, cleaning, designing and sale
of material are all done by designers. However, if we just depend
on individuals to do the whole thing, it can not be detailed and
specific enough and large commercial activities cannot be formed,
thus resources cannot be used in large scale and in a more efficient
way.
App. Fig. 2 - Plastic basket from http://diycozyhome.com/
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App. Fig. 3 - Plastic lampshade with water and milk bottles
App. Fig. 4 - Upcycling - David Hertz purchased the remains of a Boeing 747 aircraft
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App. Fig. 5 - The Recycled Orchestra is a group of young musicians from Cateura, Paraguay, Landfill Harmonic instruments
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3. UPCYCLE COMPANY
Patagonia, is a pioneer in this area, started its recycling program
back in 2005. Since then, its Common Threads Partnership
encourages people to use fewer clothes and wear them until they
are worn out. It also buys back and resells Patagonia products that
are still in good condition, and offers to repair clothing free or a
nominal charge. Patagonia does all of this while promising to trim
energy, water and toxic substances from manufacturing, reduce
packaging and transportation waste and use more sustainable
fibers, such as organic cotton and recycled polyester, in many of its
products. Adidas recently unveiled a new running shoe prototype
that the company says features an upper created entirely out of
reclaimed ocean waste consisting of yarns and filaments from
illegal deep-sea fishing nets. The shoe was created in conjunction
with Parley for the Oceans, a group that aims to raise awareness “for
the beauty and fragility of our oceans and collaborate on projects
that can end their destruction,” according to the organization’s
website.Coca Cola create a set of taps for give to the empty bottles
a second life. The questions are: Is that just an empty soda bottle?
Nope, it’s a squirt gun. Useless piece of trash? Nope, it’s a pencil
sharpener, or the perfect rattle for your baby. Make your children
happy. Give them Coca-Cola, and toys made from Coca-Cola. And if
you have two empty Coke bottles, you can even make a dumbbell
to burn off some of the calories you gained by guzzling both.
Created with the help of Ogilvy & Mather China, the campaign
features a line of 16 innovative caps that can be screwed on to
bottles when they’re empty, transforming them into useful objects
like water guns, whistles, paint brushes, bubble makers and pencil
sharpeners. It’s all part of a clever effort to encourage consumers
in Vietnam to recycle, and a rare success at the sort of alchemy that
seeks to reincarnate garbage as advertising (even if such attempts
are a cornerstone of the marketing industry). Coke will give
away 40,000 of these modified caps, which come in 16 different
varieties, to start. The Idea was a great example of upcycle. From
these examples we can understand how the big company are
changing the point of view of mass production in something mor
sustainable. The best examples in this category is the brand Freitag
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that build all the philosophy on upcycle issue. Back in 1993, graphic
designer brothers Markus and Daniel Freitag were on the lookout
for a messenger bag. Zurich citizens worthy of the name travel by
bicycle -’velo,’ they call it. When it rains, they get wet. The Freitag
brothers wanted a heavy-duty, functional and water-repellent bag
to carry their designs. Inspired by the cheerfully colored Lorries
rumbling along the cross-Zurich highway just in front of their flat,
they cut a messenger bag out of an old truck tarpaulin. As the
carry belt, they used second-hand car seat-belt webbing, while
an old bicycle inner tube provided the edging. Freitag is a Swiss
App. Fig. 6 - Puma campaign “PUMA bring back”
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company that uses recycled truck tarps to create a popular line of
messenger bags; the company’s brand blends a green sensibility
with an ample dose of raw urban grit. True to form, then, Freitag’s
new flagship store in Zurich was built entirely of recycled shipping
containers, stacked 26 meters (86 feet) high. Designed by Annette
Spillmann and Harald Echsle in Zurich,the building is officially
called the “Freitag Individual Recycled Freeway Shop,” which is
probably even more of a mouthful in German than it is in English.
So, for convenience sake, the company just calls it the F-Shop.
The Freitag Shop Zurich is completely built from rusty, recycled
freight-containers. Lovingly they were gutted, reinforced, piled
up and secured. Zurich’s first bonsai-skyscraper: Low enough
not to violate the city’s restriction on high-rise buildings. High
enough to send shivers down anyone’s spine. No word on what
they mean by “bonsai-skyscraper,” but when we asked Google’s
online translation tool to render the expression in German, we got
“Bonsaiwolkenkratzer” which really needs no further explanation.
It seems Freitag also maintains a Flickr account, and the company
recently posted photos of the now-completed store, captured just
as the first shipment of merchandise was being loaded inside. It’s
no secret that Telstar Logistics harbors a deep appreciation for the
history and design of shipping containers, so hats off to Freitag for
the bold and clever design of their new Zurich store.
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App. Fig. 7 - Coca cola taps campaign
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App. Fig. 8 - Freitag process: from truck till bag
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App. Fig. 9 - Freitag Zurich store
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4. UPCYCLE SURVEY
1. What is your age range?
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
• 18 - 20
• 22 - 25
• 25 – 35
• 35 +
Gender:
• M
• F
Occupation
• Designer
• Design student
• …
How many times a week is your trash collected?
• Once
• Twice
• Three times
• Other
Do you separate your trash? (Plastics, glass, organics etc.)
• Yes
• No
Do you know about recycling?
• Yes
• No
Do you know about upcycling? (converting waste materials
or useless products into new materials or products of better
quality or for better environmental value)
• Yes
• No
Do you reuse, recycle or upcycle your solid waste (or none)?
• Reuse Neither
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• Recycle
• Upcycle
9. Do you think to sustainable aspects when you designing?
• Yes
• No
10.Have you ever done an upcycle project?
• Yes
• No
11.Why have you done an upcycle project?
• For fun
• Because you take care about sustainability issue
• Reuse what you have
• For the challenge to find another function to the
waste
• …
12.Have you ever felt the need for a tool that helps to stimulate
innovative ideas during the design process?
• Yes
• No
13.Have you ever used tools to design (ex: charts, maps, special
methods to do research ...)?
• Yes
• No
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
LINKOGRAPHY
GLOSSARY
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
[1] William McDonough and Michael Braungart, Cradle to Cradle,
Remaking the Way We Make Things; Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
2002
[2] Gunter Pauli, The Blue Economy; Paradigm Publications 2010
[3] William McDonough and Michael Braungart,The Upcycle:
Beyond Sustainability, Designing for Abundance; North Point
Press 2013
[4] Michael H. Smith, Karlson ‘Charlie’Hargroves and Cheryl
Desha, Cents and Sustainability; Earthscan 2010
[5] Thomas Maldonado, Il futuro della modernità; Feltrinelli, 1990
[6] Thomas Maldonado, La speranza progettuale. Ambiente e
società; Enaudi, 1970
[7] Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World: Human Ecology
and Social Change; Pantheon Books, 1971
[8] John Thackara, In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World;
Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2005
[9] André Leroi Gourhan, Il gesto e la parola. Tecnica e linguaggio.
La memoria e i ritmi; Einaudi, 1977
[10] Kyungeun Sung, A Review on Upcycling: Current Body of
Literature, Knowledge Gaps and a Way Forward; Venice Italy Apr
13-14, 2015
[11] Mark Richardson, Redesign: design for reassembly; Monash
University, Department of Design, Industrial Design, Faculty of Art
and Design, 2007
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[12] Carl A. Zimring, Toward a History of Upcycling:
Reconsidering High-End Aluminum Reuse Since World War II;
Pratt Institute, 2013
[13] Christiane Wölfel1, Timothy Merritt, Method card design
dimensions: a survey of card-based design tools; University of
Munich, 2014
[14] Vines, J., Blythe, M., Lindsay, S., Dunphy, P., Monk, A., Olivier,
P., Questionable concepts: critique as resource for designing with
eighty somethings; Proc. CHI ‘12. ACM, NY, USA, 2012
[15] IDEO, IDEO Method Cards: 51 Ways to Inspire Design. IDEO,
Palo Alto, 2003
[16] T. Brown, Change by Design, Harper Collins, New York 2009
[17] S. Miettinen, M. Koivisto, Designing services with innovative
methods, Helsinki, Keuruu 2009
[18] Design kit, The field guide to human-centered design, IDEO
2015
[19] S. Parker, J. Heapy, The Journey to the interface, demos 2006
[20] E. Manzini, Design when everybody designs, mit press 2015
[21] E. Manzini, E. Staszowski, Public and collaborative, Desis
network2013
[22] A. Meroni, D. Sangiorgi, Design For Services, Gower, 2011
[23] Stuart Walker, Sustainable by Design: Explorations in Theory
and Practice , earthscan, 2006
[24] Anne Marchand, Stuart Walker, P. De Coninck, Management
of natural resources: sustainable development and ecological
hazards, C. A. Brebbia, M.E. Conti, E. Tiezzi , 2006
[25] Tariq Altalhi, Tushar Kumeria, Abel Santos, Dusan Losic, “Synthesis of well-organised carbon nanotube membranes from
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non degradable plastic bags with tuneable molecular transport:
Towards nanotechnological recycling”, Carbon, Volume 63,
November 2013
[26] Martin, M. and Parsapour, A. 2012. “Upcycling wastes with
biogas production : An exergy and economic analysis”. Venice
2012: International Symposium on Energy from Biomass and
Waste (2012)
[27] Goldsmith, Belinda (2009-09-30). “Trash or treasure?
Upcycling becomes growing green trend”. Reuters. Retrieved
2009-12-02
[28] Kay, Thornton (12 October 1994), “Salvo in Germany - Reiner
Pilz” (PDF), SalvoNEWS, no. 99, p. page 14
[29] Deterding, Sebastian, et al. “From game design elements to
gamefulness: defining gamification.” Proceedings of the 15th
International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning
Future Media Environments. ACM, 2011.
[30] Nonaka I., Takeuchi H., The Knowledge Creating Company,
University Press, Oxford 1995; tr. it. The Knowledge Creating
Company, Guerini e Associati, Milano 1997.
[31] Polanyi M., The Tacit Dimension, Anchor Books, New York
1966; tr. it. La conoscenza inespressa, Armando, Roma 1979
[32] Angioni G., Doing, Thinkink, Saying, in Sanga & Ortalli (eds.)
, Nature Knowledge, Berghahm Books, New York-Oxford 2004,
249-261
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LINKOGRAPHY
http://www.systemicdesign.org/
http://www.zeri.org/ZERI/Home.html
http://www.c2ccertified.org/
http://www.theblueeconomy.org/blue/Welcome.html
http://www.sustainabilitydictionary.com/u/upcycle.php
http://www.climnet.org/publicawareness/waste.html
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-upcycling.htm
http://www.mcdonough.com/speaking-writing/the-upcycle/#.
VmvFC0rhCUl
http://www.designkit.org/methods
https://galliolus.wordpress.com/2009/10/24/le-collane-di-rose/
http://www.theupcycle.nl/
http://upcyclelife.com/about/the-process/
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/219310
http://upcycledesign.tumblr.com/
http://www.sustainia.me/items/sharing-design-globally-forupcycling-locally/
http://dailyfreepress.com/2014/09/17/upcycling/
http://inhabitat.com/the-squirrelz-chinas-first-upcycle-designshop-takes-root-in-shanghais-eco-village/
http://www.triplepundit.com/2012/04/cash-trash-innovativecompanies-profitably-upcycle-recycle-reduce-waste/
http://www.virgin.com/entrepreneur/the-rise-of-extremeupcycling
http://www.readings.com.au/collection/upcycling-recyclingrethinking
http://www.trunity.net/upcycling/
http://www.zerowasteeurope.eu/tag/textile-upcycle/
http://www.designthinkingforeducators.com/toolkit/
http://www.servicedesigntoolkit.org/
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http://www.frogdesign.com/work/frog-collective-action-toolkit.
html
http://issuu.com/trial-error/docs/upcycle-it
https://www.ushahidi.com/blog/2011/06/03/a-toolkit-for-theother-90-ushahidi-for-joomla
http://narrativedesign.co.uk/
https://uxmag.com/articles/ux-ideas-in-the-cards
https://methodkit.com/research-method-cards/
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/489540660/designercise-acreative-thinking-game-and-ideation/description
https://medium.com/methodkit-stories/17-ways-of-usingmethodkit-13f39586de25#.vo5u9xil0
http://www.ixd.net/research/method-cards/
https://uxthink.wordpress.com/2010/11/30/using_scenarios/
http://www.sketchin.ch/it/tools/what-if/
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GLOSSARY
DIY (do it yourself ): the DIY movement is a re-introduction
of an old pattern of perso nal involvement and use of skills in
making objects and clothes.
Downcycling: the recycling of a material into another material
with lesser quality.
Energy recovery: the conversion of solid waste into energy or
saleable fuel.
Household (municipal) Waste: Waste generated in home
including food scraps, packaging, pet litter and nappies
Landfill: A least preferred method for solid waste treatment.
Landfill site refers to the final placement of waste in or on
the land in a controlled or uncontrolled way according to
different sanitary environmental protection and other safety
requirements.
Manmade material: substance made by human beings, which
do not occur naturally.
One off Design: A unique, one of a kind product, which will
not be replicated.
Post-consumer waste: textile waste created at the end of
a garment’s first use. This mostly includes used garments,
domestic textile, and other goods.
Pre-consumer waste: collective term for leftovers from stores
and company product development, sales leftovers, returned
goods, and outsourced shipments that are not redeemed from
custom for various reason.
Production waste: a prospective input of materials for
upcycling from the industry. It consists of leftovers from goods
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manufacturing.
Row material: an unprocessed natural material that is used in
manufacture for create the product.
Recycling: using waste as material to manufacture a new
product. Recycling involves alterning the physical form of an
object or material and making a new objecr from the altered
material. It thereby distinguishes itself from re use, which does
not alter the physical form of an object.
Waste recovery: is about using waste to replace other
non-waste materials to achieve a beneficial outcome in a n
environmentally sound manner. Waste recovery includes
recycling, composting and energy recovery from waste
materials.
Reuse: using an object or material again, ether for its original
purpose or for a similar purpose, without significantly altering
the physical form of the object or material.
Sales leftovers: a specific category of pre consumer waste.
Serial design: serial design or mass production is the
productions of large amounts of standardized products.
Upcycling: upward re-processing is defined as bringing waste
back into the consumption chain through design.
Waste: an unwanted or unusable substance or material.
Waste management: the collection, transportation,
processing or disposal of waste materials, in an attempt to
reduce their effect on human health or local amenity.
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