Teaching Design for Environment in Product Design Classes

Abstract

The paper presents an approach to teaching design for environment (DFE) in the context of a product design and development course. The teaching method has been applied in our classes for graduate engineering, business, and design students. Our approach includes a step-by-step DFE process and utilizes a recent Herman Miller chair as a case study to illustrate the successful application of each step in the process. The DFE process steps are based on our research at Herman Miller and on several published studies that investigated the integration of DFE into the product development process and which we assembled into the step-by-step DFE process. Furthermore, the teaching method includes a new approach to life cycle thinking by relating the product life cycle to the natural life cycle in order to from a closed-loop system.