HD·PD·08 Advanced
Sustainable & Circular Product Design
Designing for the product's whole life, not just its first use.
Sustainable product design accounts for a product's full lifecycle, material sourcing, use-phase impact, and end-of-life disassembly or recycling. This course covers circular design principles and the trade-offs designers face when sustainability, cost, and performance pull in different directions.
In Development
This course's full module content is being written. The outline below is final, subscribe for updates when it publishes.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
- 01 Evaluate a product's environmental impact across its full lifecycle, not just production
- 02 Apply circular design principles including design for disassembly
- 03 Compare material and process choices for embodied environmental impact
- 04 Navigate trade-offs between sustainability, cost, and performance honestly
- 05 Design products for repairability and extended service life
- 06 Avoid greenwashing in describing a product's sustainability claims
- Use-phase and end-of-life impact often exceed manufacturing impact
- Lifecycle thinking prevents narrow, misleading sustainability claims
- Disassembly enables repair, upgrade, and recycling
- Permanent joining methods foreclose the product's whole end-of-life value
- Embodied impact is invisible in the finished product but real and measurable
- Comparing embodied impact should inform material selection, not just cost
- Trade-offs are real and should be stated honestly, not hidden
- A transparent trade-off decision is more credible than an unexamined claim of full sustainability
- Repairability is a distinct design goal from raw durability
- Undocumented or inaccessible repair paths shorten effective product life regardless of material durability
- Vague sustainability language invites justified skepticism
- Specific, verifiable claims hold up to scrutiny; vague ones do not