Redesign a coffee machine and make it as environmentally friendly and resource efficient as possible, throughout its entire lifespan. This was the challenge given to representatives from six of the Mistra REES companies at a workshop in Gothenburg earlier this month.

“It was good to design both products and services at the same time.” “It was fun but tough”.
“Acting outside the role as product designer or service designer improves creativity.”
“It was good to experience working with practitioners from other companies.”

These are some of the comments from the twelve company representatives from six of the Mistra REES companies who participated in the design session in relation to the Mistra REES annual meeting in Gothenburg. Behind the challenge were the researchers from project 2, Tomohiko Sakao, Sergio Brambila, Sara Nilsson and Maria Widgren who wanted to study how product- and service design are interconnected to improve resource efficiency and effectiveness.

Resource efficiency

“The task we gave the company representatives was to, within a time limit of approximately 1 hour, construct a regular type of coffee machine for office use to be as resource efficient as possible – from the design phase to recycling” said Tomohiko Sakao who is the project leader of this project.

They worked in small groups to improve the concept and find smart solutions. The design session was concluded with reflections and a discussion about the work process and what challenges the participants experienced.

The outcome and comments about the exercise clearly show that this was an appreciated challenge and the researchers were very content and content with the results.

“Observing the participants work on this task are expected to gain new ideas on how to form and improve this type of design process in the future”, says Tomoniko Sakao.

Photo credit: Monica Westman

High competence

Professor Tomohiko Sakao och the PhD canditates Sergio Brambila, Sara Nilsson and Maria Widgren work at the department for Environmental Technology and Management at Linköpings University. Participants in the product design challenge were Mikael Håkansson and Sabine Trommar-Rosenblad from Attends, Daniel Gustavsson and Linus Ottosson from HTC, Andreas Ericsson and Erik Pettersson from Inrego, Annika Fernlund and Anton Aldentun from Polyplank, Axel Edh and Gunnar Magnusson from Volvo Cars and Cecilia Rosenqvist-Witte and Lisbeth Dahllöf from Volvo Group.