Circular Design Thinking: New model or additional component?

Based on a regenerative model, the circular economy is concerned with the future. From the beginning of a project, it is a question of integrating responsible choices at each stage of the life cycle: design, manufacture, and use with the aim of structuring a virtuous or circular scheme.

Its objectives are often summarized in « 5 R »: Reduce (resources, material..), Repair, Reuse, Remanufacture, Recycle.

How does Circular Design Thinking bring value?

In Design Thinking, the analysis of the context & the problem and the search for inspirations motivate and feed the creative process. They therefore have an impact on the ideation and potentially on the response.

• Circular Design Thinking is distinguished by 2 additional components:

  • The ideation is based on tools of understanding and questioning: butterfly diagram, bio mimicry, bio materials ... to innovate by drawing inspiration from the living.

  • The systemic dimension constitutes the second major contribution. In this case, the creative process not only takes into account the interactions between all the actors involved but also the concept of shared utility or collective discernment.

    « Low - tech agricultural tools are irrelevant if they serve agricultural practices that are energetically unsustainable and destructive of soil and life » (The Conversation).

Without being disruptive, Circular Design Thinking therefore forces us to think circularity before innovation.

Low - tech innovation: how to rething needs?

The Low - Tech concept aims to collectively think, encourage and write the big story of transformation. The goal is simple: reducing the environmental footprint.

The Conversation - online media and non-profit association - whose objective is to share knowledge by making the voice of researchers heard in the citizen debate, specifies the list of 3 criteria which, according to the exploration laboratory The Low Tech Lab characterize low-tech innovation: accessibility, sustainability and utility.

• Accessibility is synonymous with the open circulation of technical knowledge and know-how

• Sustainability is part of a circular economy logic that encourages sobriety, eco-design and simplicity

• Utility defines itself

But then, how to decompartmentalize needs, hybridize ideas, mix ideation in order to re-establish bonds and push to action.

User eXperience Research actively participates in this process. By rethinking needs from different combined angles: psychological, socio-cultural, economic, health ... in order to bring out new experiences and new low-tech design and production ecosystems.

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