![Sample our Arts journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110799/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Arts.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
This paper presents a study on sustainable product relationships with an eye on textiles and clothing. A framework is constructed which integrates sustainable product relationships and the field and role of design. As a result, it studies how an empathic design approach could improve a sustainable design process. In order to promote sustainability, designers need to aim at enhancing long-term product relationships. By studying the user's relationships with and attachments to products, designers have the opportunity to create deeper product satisfaction and thereby long-term product relationships. This paper concludes by evaluating how an empathic approach can be of primary importance in promoting sustainable product relationships by deepening current methods of understanding consumers' needs, values and emotions.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Kirsi Niinimäki
Kirsi Niinimäki is a textile designer and doctoral candidate at Aalto University, School of Art and Design. In her research she focuses on sustainable textile and clothing design. She is especially interested in the consumer-based approach to consumption of clothing and textiles and furthermore, the sustainable consumption and production agenda. She has published articles in the Research Journal of Textile and Apparel, Journal of Sustainable Development and Journal of Cleaner Production and has presented her research at several international conferences.
Ilpo Koskinen
Ilpo Koskinen is a sociologist who joined the industrial design programme at University of Art and Design Helsinki in 1999 (currently Aalto University, School of Art and Design). His main publications are the books Mobile Image (2002), Mobile Multimedia in Action (2007), and Empathic Design (2003, edited with Katja Battarbee and Tuuli Mattelmäki) and Lab, Field, Showroom (2011).
