Design Factory insights

Most work in sustainable product development focuses on energy and resource efficient design. While this is a valuable and worthy tactic, it does not always result in actual energy saving during device use. This is because users may not want to, or know how to, use the device in an energy efficient manner. In fact, over 30% of device energy consumption can be determined by user behavior, not just the design itself. Profs. Katja & Kevin, alongside colleagues at Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), have developed a way to help designers to better understand and integrate user behavior with energy efficient design goals.

Designers of complex systems such as large engines, airplanes, or manufacturing systems have unique struggles when compared to designers designing simpler and smaller systems. Any decision will have a system wider hard-to-understand impact, the system lifecycle can be decades, which means a series of expected and unexpected changes, etc. In recent work Prof. Katja with colleagues from Seoul National University have been tackling this issue from product architecture point of view. What should a system architect take into the account when deciding on the system elements, their connectivity and modularity?