Teaching Design for Environment in Product Design Classes

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 classes at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 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 successful application of 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 product development. We have found that the Herman Miller case study motivates students to learn a DFE process that enables progress towards sustainability based on design and several other business functions. Furthermore, the teaching method includes an extended approach to life cycle thinking by relating the product life cycle to the natural life cycle in order to from a closed-loop system.