Design for the environment in UK product design consultancies and in-house design teams: an explorative case study on current practices and opinions.

This paper considers the perceptions of design consultancies and in house design teams about design for environment (DfE) and its implementation. The research reported investigates the current design for the environment practices, if any, that are evident within twenty British product development teams. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken where possible with designers, engineers, production managers and managing directors about their current projects in order to generate a state of the art picture about the adoption of DfE in product development. The paper presents an overview of the preliminary analysis of these case studies and proceeds to highlight the difficulties that design for the environment faces within product development teams; these include low reputation, recognition and adoption of DfE, as well as a lack of cohesive direction across the process. The need for further research that focuses on how these difficulties could be overcome in different parts of product development and the wider context of operations management is highlighted.