On this page you find cases and examples of projects where the Product Impact Tool is applied.
Project: Product Impact and Responsible Innovation
The Product Impact Tool can serve well to shape Socially Responsible Innovation. In collaboration with the University of Wageningen, we have worked on connecting the conceptual frameworks of the PIT and Responsible Innovation and developed a combined tool. This was in the context of a project to also stimulate Responsible Innovation at start-ups. The PIT is hereby embedded in a workshop on Responsible Innovation. The combined tool has been elaborated and tested in workshops with twelve start-ups in the field of sustainable technology for agriculture.
Although developped in a project about Design for Usability the Product Impact Tool was from the beginnig framed in the context of responsible design and innovation.
- See the book chapter on the Product Impact Tool by Dorrestijn
- A more extensive discussion of this framing can be found in Dorrestijn’s thesis The design of our own lives (first and last chapter).
- See an article on design for wellbeing and the legacy of utopian design by Dorrestijn and Verbeek about the historical context of behaviour changing design (without explicit mention this time of the Product Impact Tool).
Project: The Practical Turn in Philosophy of Technology
The Product Impact Tool originated from a collaboration between
Philosophy of Technology and Industrial Design. The positive results with the development and application of the PIT have given rise to the idea to further expand this collaboration. By analogy with the well-known “empirical turn” in philosophy of technology, we have called this initiative the “practical turn”.
The central idea of the practical turn revolves around the two-fold interaction between philosophy of technology and design. On the one hand application of philosophy of technology theory and tools in design processes for improving human-product interaction. On the other hand to gain more insight into philosophy of technology issues, by being able to test the answers to these issues in practice through the design of actual products and services.
Two sessions have now been organized around the practical turn as part of scientific conferences. One at the Design Research Conference in Limerick (Ireland) in 2018 and one at the Academy for Design Innovation Management conference in London in 2019 [session description].
- Presentation about the Practical Turn
- Program of the DRS conference session
- Proceedings of the DRS conference session (excerpt from proceedings online)
- Program of the ADIM conference session
- Proceedings of the ADIM conference session
Case: Privacy-friendly surveillance in elderly home
Martine Vonk and Steven Dorrestijn from the Saxion research group Ethics & Technology investigated the failed implementation of a monitoring system for detection of falling incidents in an elderly home. Part of the research was a structured assessment of the impact of the specific design of the system, and to gain insight into the ethical problems by way of this impact assessment.
Case: The Philosophical Camera
In a research project by Tom Feij and Sven Deinum, the historical developments of the camera as a product category were analyzed in order to find improvements for the design of future digital camera’s. The product impact tool was used in the study to analyze the human-product interactions. It was found that due to the switch to digital camera’s, the focus of the user moved from the subject (looking through the camera) to the object (looking at the screen of the camera itself).
The project resulted in a new lay-out for a digital camera, where the user looks through the camera again, by simply holding the camera between herself and the subject or scene. The distance in between you and the subject determines the framing of the picture. A prototype was built to test the new interaction mode.
- download the full report of the project of Tom Feij and Sven Deinum.
- download the report about the prototype and the evaluation
Case: Littering at a Secondary School
In the Industrial Design Engineering Bachelor’s graduation project of Paul de Waard, the Impact Tool product was used to find solutions for the litter that remains in the canteen after lunch breaks at a secondary school. The tool was used on the one hand in the analysis phase to better understand the causes of the problem, and on the other hand in the design phase to develop more different solutions.
results of the research: persuasion (before-the-eye), in order to seduce the students in a playful way to collect the waste does not work (left). The solution lies in a form of coercion (to-the-hand), where the waste bin is located directly in front of the users at the table (center and right).
- see the complete thesis of Paul de Waard (in Dutch)