Emma Dewberry

• PhD
• Senior Lecturer at The Open University

An exercise in making an ecosystem perspective as central to design learning.

This book is an outcome of the collective efforts of the Design Research Society (DRS) Special Interest Groups (SIGs) in Global Health, Pluriversal Design SIG, Sustainability SIG, SIGWELL and Education. We thank the DRS as well as all the members of our SIGs and all the contributing authors to this volume.

Sustainable and Responsible Design (SRD) harnesses design’s potential to address eco-social problems and in doing so challenge the status quo of design education by reframing the social and ecological consequences, boundaries and agencies of design. This critical and transdisciplinary approach frays the edges of traditional design disciplines with...

Sustainable and Responsible Design (SRD) harnesses design’s potential to address eco-social problems and in doing so challenge the status quo of design education by reframing the social and ecological consequences, boundaries and agencies of design. This critical and transdisciplinary approach frays the edges of traditional design disciplines with...

Approximately 20% of UK buildings can be defined as ‘heritage buildings’, offering unique values that should be preserved. They tend to use more energy than newer buildings, creating a strong case for energy retrofits to reduce energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, and improve thermal comfort. However, few studies of heritage retrofits examine embo...

Re-distributed manufacturing presents a number of opportunities and challenges for New Product Development in a future Circular Economy. It has been argued that small-scale, flexible and localised production systems will reduce resource consumption, lower transport emissions and extend product lifetimes. At the same time smart products within the I...

This paper explores the narrative of peoples’ relationships with products as a window on understanding the types of innovation that may inform a culture of sufficiency. The work forms part of the ‘Business as Unusual: Designing Products with Consumers in the Loop’ [BaU] project, funded as part of the UK EPSRC-ESRC RECODE network (RECODE, 2016) that...

Economic crises pose challenges for the provision of public services but may also open up opportunities for social learning about how to achieve a sustainable society. The main research question addressed in this paper is: can economic crises catalyse social learning for a sustainable society? The hypothesis of the paper is that social learning eme...

Infrastructure systems face a number of pressing challenges relating to demographics, environment, finance and governance pressures. Furthermore, infrastructure mediates the way in which everyday lives are conducted; their form and function creating a persistence of unsustainable practice and behaviour that cannot be changed even if change is desir...

In this article we consider the impact of shock in hospital emergency departments where people seek urgent medical care and access hospital services. We define shock as an unexpected event or set of circumstances, for although emergency departments plan for uncertainty, shock moments are when protocols and procedures fail to meet operational demand...

This paper explores the potential for learning from infrastructure shocks to develop strategic visions of infrastructure. The paper departs from theories of systems innovation, which understand infrastructure transitions as socio-technical re-configurations over long periods of time. The paper presents a complementary hypothesis to those theories a...

In response to unsustainability and the prospect of resource scarcity, lifestyles dominated by resource throughput are being challenged. This paper focuses on a design experiment that sought to introduce alternative resource consumption pathways in the form of product service systems (PSS) to satisfy household demand and reduce consumer durable hou...

The briefing statement for this conference suggests that times of crisis offer opportunities for doing things differently. An EPSRC funded project, 'Shock (not) Horror: mediating radical transformations in infrastructure provision', uses this concept to explore shocks as key moments to learn about infrastructure and to create the potential for long...

Integrated infrastructure systems offer opportunities to develop more sustainable and resilient systems of essential service provision, such as water, power, waste, transport and ICT. However, such utilities are currently managed and regulated in silos and have historically focused on failure monitoring which inevitably leads to optimal management...

This paper considers the barriers to BIM adoption and demonstrates they are symptoms of existing problems in the Architecture, Engineering, Construction, and Operations AECO industry. When current external pressures are considered, a varied and complex set of problems emerge that require a significant paradigm change if they are to be resolved sust...

It has been argued in recent years that Western economies need to increase their resource productivity by 90% over the next 50 years. This is a radical aim. This paper draws on design for sustainability (DfS) thinking to scope interventions that encourage greater levels of resource productivity through reconfiguring concepts of growth and well-bein...

The way that human beings live and consume the natural and environmental resources of the planet are not sustainable. Sustainability involves changes in individual beliefs, expectations, values and behaviours at the microlevel, changes in policy at the macrolevel of governments, and changes in the design of objects, social organisations and structu...

Many commentators stress the need for a change in the values and practice of learning to enable society to respond to new, emerging questions that face the world today. Empowering people to ask the right questions should be a prime motive of education for sustainability as the learning outcomes of this will be key to delivering effective agendas -...

This paper describes ongoing research which explores a need to foster different dialogues in design. It sets out the challenge for design in responding to increasing evidence of limits to growth: that is the boundaries of access to, and use of, Natural Capital (the Earth’s resources). Current design activities respond to resource limits through the...

This paper presents the results of a study into new product development (NPD) in the high-end audio industry in Japan, North America, and the UK. A total of 38 companies were visited and interviewed, and detailed benchmarks of product development performance and practice were obtained from 21 companies and 31 NPD projects. Performance was gauged by...

The Development of New Products: A Comparison of Japanese, British and North American Practices This article presents the results of a study designed to identify the best product development practices in Japan, the United Kingdom and North America. Interviews with representatives of various organizations facilitated detailed benchmarking. The effec...

Crime is a social and environmental problem—its root causes are multiple and wide-ranging—and thus, it may be assumed, effective crime solutions will need to embrace many levels of approach. Sustainable development is also a complex social and environmental problem, which is increasingly acknowledged in many arenas, not least a business one. This g...

The Design for the Environment Multimedia Implementation Project – demi – links design and sustainability information in a Web-based resource and was set up in response to a number of UK Government reports which highlighted the dearth of knowledge and activity about sustainability in higher education design courses across the country. This paper de...

Sustainable development requires more long-term thinking and planning in society, in the economy and now, increasingly, in business, giving rise to techniques such as strategic planning, scenario-building and foresighting. These processes are usually performed by strategic functions within companies or as part of policy development; however, more r...

This chapter explores the role played by design in achieving more sustainable patterns of consumption that examines in detail a variety of approaches associated with clothes washing. The discussion has obvious relevance for all designed surroundings and includes various levels of approach, including a focus on products, results, needs, and issues a...

This paper describes an educational framework offering one possible approach to linking sustainability and design. This framework, developed as part of the demi project, provides links to information new to designers thereby challenging the design status quo. For example, it incorporates the integration of different communities within designing-oft...

The relationship between design and sustainability (DfS) is forever evolving: from the early focus on cleaner production processes and resource efficiencies to more recent endeavours to promote environmentally benign behaviours or to counter the increasing impacts of climate change. The uncomfortable truth though is that the majority of design acti...

A Factor 10 increase in the productivity of natural resource requires transformations in the way we all learn, work and play. Its central goal highlights the importance of individual accountability - the cause and effect of our day-to-day decisions about what material and energy we choose to buy, use and waste. These changing perspectives on utilit...

Abstract not available.

Environmental degradation and concepts of ‘sustainability’ have recently become a focus of political, commercial and social concern. This thesis addresses one of the issues concerning human impact on the environment, namely the environmental awareness and action of those involved with design and development. This project provides an overview of des...

The Design for the Environment Multimedia Implementation Project – demi – links design and sustainability information in a Web-based resource and was set up in response to a number of UK Government reports which highlighted the dearth of knowledge and activity about sustainability in higher education design courses across the country. This paper de...