Product Developers and Designers: Need to Future-proof your Skills?

Can we design products with the potential to become more profitable for producers, and less expensive for customers? We have showed its possible, and few business leaders would say no to that proposition. Join us on January 26 and learn about Future Adaptive Design and how to design long-lasting products for circular business models.

As a designer of physical products back in the days, my job was to make products desirable and a joy to use so that my clients could grow their sales. Resource depletion or climate change was nothing anybody knew of. Products were designed for single use, and as designers we learned to optimize for cost effective components and materials.

But reality has moved on. I am the first to confess that I was part of the problem, but as a designer today, you need to be part of the solution. That means unlearning some of the logics that used to rule product design and adapt a new mindset for how to design for longevity and resource efficiency. And how to design products for multiple users and optimize them for circular business models.

Last summer my mother gave me her kitchen assistant that she got as a wedding gift some 60 years ago. It still works like clockwork, and I could still buy spare parts to it. This is the mindset. But with modern electronics and the speed of tech evolution we can’t go back in time, rather we need to think adaptability, modularity, repairability, circular flows and product as a service. This way it is possible to build more profitable solutions with less resources.

Future Adaptive Design

This is not an easy challenge, my brilliant colleagues here at RISE have researched this for 10 years and collaborated with companies from multiple sectors. The result is the Future Adaptive Design framework and toolkit that takes a business perspective to how to design for longevity and shape solutions for circular business models.

Circular Business Lab at RISE

The Circular Business Lab at RISE is a collaborative space with a mission to accelerate the transition to a circular economy. We are now offering a training package for designers and product developers to learn the Future Adaptive Design approach. Collaborating with the consulting industry, we aim to accelerate the transition to a circular economy and address sustainability challenges.

Join us on January 26 for an introduction to Future Adaptive Design. This remote training is tailored for business leaders, designers, engineers, and project leaders in product development. You can read more and register here.

Come join, be a Frontrunner and get ready for the Circular Transition!

Published: 2023-12-20