Designing for Less and Longer: An Operational Framework for Lifecycle Governance, Control and Resource Efficiency

Abstract

The transition from a recycling-based economy to a circular economy requires more than isolated improvements in materials, energy efficiency or end-of-life treatment. Especially in the early stages of product development, the fuzzy front end, interdisciplinary teams of engineers and product designers face high uncertainty while making decisions that strongly shape the product system. Existing approaches provide valuable support for lifecycle-oriented analysis or selected circular design strategies but still lack an integrative and practical framework that enables interdisciplinary teams to reflect on the current product system and derive actionable design directions. This paper addresses this gap by proposing an operational framework for circular product design grounded in the derived guiding principle of “Less and Longer”. The framework combines lifecycle thinking, multidimensional evaluation and a control-oriented perspective in a Circular Design Matrix supporting early-stage decision-making in circular product development. It facilitates interdisciplinary collaboration and supports reflective, creative dialogue among technical and creative disciplines. The Circular Design Matrix assess the product system across seven dimensions and five lifecycle phases with “control” as an enabling layer for a strategic re-design. Embedded in a collaborative framework, the approach was explored in an initial evaluation using three product cases: smartphones, washing machines and child car seats. The findings indicate that the framework is particularly valuable in interdisciplinary workshop settings, where it supports structured reflection, the identification of optimization potential and an iterative, holistic reconsideration of the product system from a circular economy perspective.