Exploring Product/Part Longevity in Open Design of Small Kitchen Appliances

Abstract

Emerged at the intersection of open-source, do-it-yourself and maker movements, and blurring of the lines among users, designers and producers, open design suggests a continuous process of co-designing open to everyone and demonstrates opportunities for repair, reuse and upgrading through transparent processes and design sharing. While such opportunities are conceptualized in literature, how they can (or should) be reflected in design is an open question worth exploring. This paper presents an exploratory study on product/part longevity, personalization and reuse to find out the implications of open design for transforming an already established product category like small kitchen appliances. For this purpose, research through co-designing methodology was developed and utilized through two design workshops on practices shaped around small kitchen appliances. The study revealed sustainable design considerations for idea-generation, open part properties that respond to them, the strategies for iterating open designs and their implications for product/part longevity, personalization and reuse.

Keywords:

• open design
• design for sustainability
• research through designing
• small kitchen appliances
• design considerations
• co-design

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the members of Sustain! Design Research Lab, Middle East Technical University (METU), Ankara and NODUS Sustainable Design Research Group, Aalto University, Helsinki for their support throughout this study. This paper presents a Ph.D. study submitted to the METU Department of Industrial Design.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplemental Data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/14606925.2020.1826635.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yekta Bakırlıoğlu

Yekta Bakırlıoğlu ([email protected]) is a design researcher with an interest in open design, design for sustainability, sustainable production and consumption, and design education for sustainability; he is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Media and Visual Arts, Koç University.

Çağla Doğan

Çağla Doğan ([email protected]) as a design educator and researcher, has knowledge and experience at graduate and undergraduate levels focussing on design education and generative and exploratory research for sustainability. She is currently a faculty member at METU Department of Industrial Design and projects coordinator at SustainDRL research group.