This document discusses design research for a master's thesis focused on design management and sustainability. It covers topics like sustainable development concepts involving balancing environmental, social and economic impacts. It also discusses principles for sustainable product design, like designing for disassembly or reuse. Finally, it discusses sustainable design management and how it can strategically envision opportunities, organize sustainable product development processes, and deliver final sustainable products through leadership, diagnosis, dialogue and monitoring.

1. MASTER THESIS
DESIGN RESEARCH

2. Capital Production
Capital Consumption
NATURAL CAPITAL
FINANCIAL CAPITAL
INTELECTUAL CAPITAL
Design
Social
Environmental
Economic
Design Management & SustainabilityDesign Research | Master Thesis
Global Systemic Relations
Design Management
Is related to making visions become reality.
Design Management becomes the central area when it
comes to translate a company’s strategy and vision of sustain-
ability into sustainable products or services.
Has a role in strategy definition, functional planning and
operations implementation, providing a holistic overview of
a design intervention and the process of product development.
Must develop a set of new core competences to address
sustainability issues and turn this effort into a new competi-
tive advantage edge for a company.
Sustainable Development Concept
It is based on a 3 fold approach, the ‘Triple Bottom Line:
Economic | Social | Environmental
to understand and manage the impacts of our actions.
This concept is mainly supported and achievable by the
non interruptible and balanced global flow of capitals:
Financial | Intelectual | Natural
Is related to a global system.
“Sustainable development is development that meets the
needs of the present without compromising the ability of
future generations to meet their own needs.”
Problem Context | Actual Paradigm

3. Design Management & SustainabilityDesign Research | Master Thesis
Sustainable Practices
5 Key principles in companies restructure Strategies in Product Development5 Key principles in Design
- Design for disassembly;
- Design for reuse;
- Design for recycling;
- Design for resource efficiency;
- Design for energetic efficiency;
- Design for maintainability;
- Design for durability;
- Design for share;
- Product Life-Cycle Assessment;
Shared Values, Ethics, and Guiding Principles
Create a culture based on Sustainability;
Leadership
Key people, who define sustainability and set directions;
Goals, metrics and reports
Means to measure, track and report progress realized;
Engagement
Involve people in listening, understanding and comply;
Structure
Create organizational support for decision making and action.
“We need to educate people about systems thinking and help
them understand how all of these activities are interdependent and
affect each other.”
Cyclic
Promote the use of organical and
recyclable materials;
Solar
Use renewable energy through
production and product’s life-cycle;
Safe
Every emission related to a product
must be easily reabsorbed by ecossis-
tems without any impact;
Efficient
Must use as less as possible
resources through production and
product’s life-cycle;
Social
Production and use must promote
and comply with human rights and
natural justice.
Jeffrey Hollender - Cofounder Seventh Generation
“Sustainable design is generally considered a specialist approach
to design proper - an extra (yet fully integrated) set of issues to be
considered when planning, developing and producing objects,
spaces and experiences.”
Jonathan Chapman & Nick Gant

4. Design
Social
Environmental
Economic
Design Management & SustainabilityDesign Research | Master Thesis
Sustainable Design Management
Design Management Holistic Intervention
Core Competences and Intervention Levels
Strategic Level Functional Level Operational Level
Envision
Opportunity / intervention definition
Organize / Create
Sustainable product development process
Deliver
Final sustainable product
Leadership
A sustainable design management must lead
the process of change within a company. Start-
ing with it’s culture, and go even further, being
highly active in the engagement and motivation
of all internal departments, where a ‘personal
approach’ takes an essential role.
Diagnosis
Setting a goal is as important as the definition
of the actual performance. A global diagnosis of
a company’s sustainable performance will show
critical intervention points where design can act.
Dialog
Interdisciplinarity is a golden rule to improve a
sustainable performance. A sustainable design
management, shall promote internal and exter-
nal partners communication, bringing together
all different expertise and synthesize usefull
data to be delivered to the design resources.
Monitoring
Assuring that the design intervention delivers
a final sustainable output, is the role of a design
manager in the operational level. This compe-
tence demands the definition of metrics and
processes to monitor the progress and achieve-
ments of the design department. A strong skill of
decision making is critical in the judgement on
sustainable performance of the solutions developed
by designers.

5. Industrial Design Portfolio
manuel.damiao@me.com
Manuel Damião Ferreira
manuel.damiao
http://be.net/damiao
00351 916 399 812
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