Besides the explicit economic and environmental impacts, the product development process also produces an implicit social value – known as social impact. We recognize that the concept of social impact is broad and can easily become unwieldy, but we also believe that considering social impacts at an early stage of product development process could have a high possibility to improve a product’s social impacts. To fulfill that, it’s necessary to clarify relations among product functions, design parameters, and social impacts.To help product designers better understand and plan for the social impact that their product may have, we present a social impact checklist table. This checklist table was constructed after a simple study was conducted on the design and reuse of corrugated cardboard. The checklist table provides the designer the opportunity to more deeply consider eleven social impact categories, map those categories to key indicators, and ultimately design parameters that influence social impact. We introduce this checklist table at the early stages of the product development process, aiming to make the otherwise implicit notion of social impact more explicit and recognizable. The checklist table has the potential to make the social dimension of sustainability more accessible to design engineers; they can then better conceive of sustainable solutions and create products that generate positive social impact.  


Consideration of Social Impacts During the Early Stages of Product Development for Sustainable Design

Division / Sponsors: 
Design Engineering Division and Computers & Information In Engineering Division


Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/IDETC-CIE/IDETC-CIE2020/volume/83907

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