Industry Experiences of Environmentally Conscious Design Integration: An Exploratory Study

This research has explored environmentally conscious design in the electrical/electronics industry sector. In this new and rapidly evolving field, existing research has not yet sought to understand the causes of success and the problems experienced when companies have integrated environmental considerations into the design process.The findings in this thesis emerged from one in-depth study and a transatlantic industry survey, interviewing twenty four practitioners.

A framework of factors affecting environmentally conscious design was derived from this research and a model of environmentally conscious design integration developed which describes the industry’s experience of integrating environmental considerations into the design processes.