Repair plays a critical role in promoting circular economy principles and fostering resource efficiency. However, the current environment often discourages repair activities. While new policies, such as the Green Deal and EU directives, aim to disseminate and implement repair strategies, there remains a significant need to support users throughout the repair process. This study aims to explore the existing body of knowledge that supports users at various stages of the repair activity, focusing specifically on household appliances. Through a systematic literature review, 12 articles were identified, analyzed, and categorized into five themes. Furthermore, seven key attributes were identified, against which the selected papers were classified. The analysis highlights the need for effective and efficient support, particularly for non-tech-savvy users, during self-repair activities.

This study highlights the importance of interface design in sustainable product development within a circular economy. By focusing on the end-of-life (EOL) phase, the research emphasizes modular product architectures’ role in improving component separability, reusability, and recyclability. An extended Module Interface Graph (MIG) was developed to assess interface variance, detachability, and material pairings, enabling the identification of critical interfaces that significantly influence EOL outcomes. The approach was successfully applied to a portal milling machine, demonstrating its ability to highlight key areas for design improvements, such as transitioning from non-detachable to standardized, detachable interfaces. This method showcases the potential for early interface considerations to enhance both environmental sustainability and product lifecycle management.

The main objective of this paper is the investigation of possibilities to enhance the resilience and sustainability of technical systems by means of function-oriented system design. Design for Resilience aims at creating technical systems capable of withstanding and adapting to internal and external changes. Design for Sustainability has the objective to create solutions that meet present needs without compromising future generations, for instance by means of avoiding environmental destruction, improving resource efficiency, and achieving a long-term ecological balance. Function-oriented design is the most abstract form of solution generation. This paper presents arguments to verify the hypothesis that function-oriented system design is a prerequisite for both Design for Resilience and Design for Sustainability, discusses connections between both aspects, and proposes a common process.

The extension of the product lifecycle is crucial in the application of Circular Economy principles. However, when Energy Related Products are concerned, managing a durable product does not necessarily mean dealing with sustainable products. This happens because components and/or materials are affected by aging and lead to increased requirement of resources to run (i.e. electricity); there are certain trends that, although distinct from the previous facts, balance the effects of aging, i.e. energy grid mix decarbonization. In the present work an approach that considers both the economic and environmental consequences of durable products is proposed. The Durabot tool has been developed to accomplish the environmental analysis. The work overcomes the main literature criticalities: enables the assessment of environmental consequences of durability ; the evolution of energy grid mix is introduced; the environmental consequences of durable products in different lifecycle scenarios can be assessed during the design phase; therefore, the components to substitute and to make accessible are identified. The tool is intended to be used aiming at design for product lifecycle extension, maintaining both economic and environmental convenience

Adaptive façades (AF) present a promising approach to reduce environmental impacts in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction sector. However, the automatization of the façade produces new challenges as the complexity of the system increases. To support the early phase of interdisciplinary development, solution collections such as databases are helpful. Previous research identified that existing solution collections of AF do not meet the requirements that such a method demands. In the effort to develop an optimized database, this paper investigates how the state of the art can be structured in terms of content in order to present it in the database. Here, a set of design parameters is developed based on identified requirements and on the main characteristics of AF that were previously elaborated. This set offers a comprehensive perspective on the previously realized functions and mechanisms of AF and can also contribute to finding creative solutions in the form of new concepts by combining the design parameters in new ways. Finally, 40 case studies of previously implemented adaptive façades are used to evaluate the set of design parameters.

Trust is an important factor in building acceptance of autonomous vehicles within our society, but the complex nature of trust makes it challenging to design for an appropriate level of trust. This can lead to instances of mistrust and/or distrust between users and AV’s. Designing for calibrated trust is a possible option to address this challenge. Existing research on designing for calibrated trust focuses on the human machine interaction (HMI), while from literature we infer that trust creation beings much before the first interaction between a user and an AV. The goal of our research is to broaden the scope of calibrated trust, by exploring the pre-use phase and understand the challenges faced in calibration of trust. Within our study 16 mobility experts were interviewed and a thematic analysis of the interviews was conducted. The analysis revealed the lack of clear communication between stakeholders, a solutionism approach towards designing and lack of transparency in design as the prominent challenges. Building on the research insights, we briefly introduce the Calibrated Trust Toolkit as our design solution, and conclude by proposing a sweet spot for achieving calibration of trust between users and autonomous vehicles.

The aim of this paper is to examine the current state of research on tolerance-induced costs in Germany. Through a literature research already existing approaches for the determination of costs related to tolerances during the specification of technical components are pointed out and possible approaches for the reduction of these costs are presented. In addition, the actuality of these approaches will be considered. One question that is supposed to be answered here is to what state of standard for the specification of components these approaches can be assigned to. On the other hand, it should be clarified whether the existing approaches are applicable to the currently valid standard system of the Geometrical Product Specification (GPS).

Can the economic efficiency of the specifications selected for tolerancing be determined in a technical drawing during the product development process in accordance with GPS on the basis of the current state of research?

Extended product warranties, leasing, and pay-per-use schemes are few examples of how manufacturing companies are shifting their focus from selling products to offering “solutions”, combining products and services to maximise customer value. The idea of optimising a system towards the best ‘value’ is both “intuitive and sensible”, and processes such as Value Driven Design (VDD), have been proposed to supplement traditional engineering design methodologies. Yet, value-driven initiatives struggle to communicate their benefits and to demonstrate how value models can solve actual problems. The aim of this paper is to shed light on the evolution of the VDD toolbox, mapping research clusters, applications and case studies from the perspective of how much (and how well) recent contributions have answered the five top-level questions of the VDD research agenda published in 2012. The results of the systematic literature review reveal the emergence of innovative modelling constructs, methods, and tools that help VDD in taking a leap forward in supporting organizations and teams in achieving the long-sought objective of designing for 'value'.