Literature on Circular Design

Here’s the entire UX literature on Circular Design by the Interaction Design Foundation, collated in one place:

Use Circular Design To Reverse Harm

Nature is circular. Nothing ever goes to waste. The banana peel we discard degrades into nutritious compost for plants. Even the remains of deceased animals and humans disintegrate into the soil. Human engineering and design, on the other hand, are linear processes. And that has put us on a one-way highway to a global wasteland. How can we move from linear economies to a more natural, circular one? Grand old man of UX design, Don Norman answers in this video.

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Circular Design

The circular economy requires circular design. The three principles of circular design are:

Eliminate waste and pollution, including toxic substances that harm the soil and water and reduce emissions. Design plays a key role here. Almost every product generates waste, and so we need to redesign everything.
Circulate products and materials at their highest value for as long as possible. For example, we can build machines to last a long time and be dismantlable so their parts can be repaired easily and reused in new products. They should be recyclable so that no more resources are mined from the earth.
Regenerate natural systems by returning natural resources to the earth. For example, food waste can help regenerate farmlands.

The circular economy butterfly diagram by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation illustrates how we can minimize waste using both renewable and non-renewable materials.

The Take Away

Today, we have a linear economy. We collect raw materials from the earth, and we transform the raw materials into products which we sell to consumers. When the products are not working any longer or when they’re not trendy anymore, we consumers discard them as waste.

A circular economy generates zero waste. Once a component enters the cycle, it continues to be used for a long time. And once it is unusable, it can degrade naturally.

To create a circular economy, people from different disciplines must work together, think strategically about materials, and ensure they are reusable. Sustainable design is paramount. Today, manufacturers combine different natural materials to create artificial materials. While the original components of these new materials degrade naturally, the artificial ones, once made, cannot be unmade. One of the biggest challenges is the conflict between circular manufacturing and aesthetics. In an attempt to make something that's small, thin and lightweight, companies have made it impossible to reuse materials because they've combined them in ways that are difficult or even impossible to separate. This conflict between aesthetics and circularity is challenging, but with concerted action, an excellent opportunity for businesses.

References and Where to Learn More

Learn more about circular design in Don Norman’s book Design for a Better World: Meaningful, Sustainable, Humanity Centered.

Additional resources from the book “Design for a Better World” are available at the Resources for DBW website.

Read more articles and essays by Don Norman on JND.org.

Watch this video interview with Dame Ellen MacArthur on What is a circular economy? (~10 minutes)

See more about Circular Economy here.

Learn more about Circular Design

Take a deep dive into Circular Design with our course Design for a Better World with Don Norman .

“Because everyone designs, we are all designers, so it is up to all of us to change the world. However, those of us who are professional designers have an even greater responsibility, for professional designers have the training and the knowledge to have a major impact on the lives of people and therefore on the earth.”
— Don Norman, Design for a Better World

Our world is full of complex socio-technical problems:

Unsustainable and wasteful practices that cause extreme climate changes such as floods and droughts.
Wars that worsen hunger and poverty.
Pandemics that disrupt entire economies and cripple healthcare.
Widespread misinformation that undermines education.

All these problems are massive and interconnected. They seem daunting, but as you'll see in this course, we can overcome them.

Design for a Better World with Don Norman is taught by cognitive psychologist and computer scientist Don Norman. Widely regarded as the father (and even the grandfather) of user experience, he is the former VP of the Advanced Technology Group at Apple and co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group.

Don Norman has constantly advocated the role of design. His book “The Design of Everyday Things” is a masterful introduction to the importance of design in everyday objects. Over the years, his conviction in the larger role of design and designers to solve complex socio-technical problems has only increased.

This course is based on his latest book “Design for a Better World,” released in March 2023. Don Norman urges designers to think about the whole of humanity, not just individual people or small groups.

In lesson 1, you'll learn about the importance of meaningful measurements. Everything around us is artificial, and so are the metrics we use. Don Norman challenges traditional numerical metrics since they do not capture the complexity of human life and the environment. He advocates for alternative measurements alongside traditional ones to truly understand the complete picture.

In lesson 2, you'll learn about and explore multiple examples of sustainability and circular design in practice. In lesson 3, you'll dive into humanity-centered design and learn how to apply incremental modular design to large and complex socio-technical problems.

In lesson 4, you'll discover how designers can facilitate behavior-change, which is crucial to address the world's most significant issues. Finally, in the last lesson, you'll learn how designers can contribute to designing a better world on a practical level and the role of artificial intelligence in the future of design.

Throughout the course, you'll get practical tips to apply in real-life projects. In the "Build Your Case Study" project, you'll step into the field and seek examples of organizations and people who already practice the philosophy and methods you’ll learn in this course.

You'll get step-by-step guidelines to help you identify which organizations and projects genuinely change the world and which are superficial. Most importantly, you'll understand what gaps currently exist and will be able to recommend better ways to implement projects. You will build on your case study in each lesson, so once you have completed the course, you will have an in-depth piece for your portfolio.

Design for a Better World with Don Norman

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All open-source articles on Circular Design