Teaching sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

10 minutes

Tune In: Meet Liam, the recycling robot

20 minutes

Find Out: Designing for value and product stewardship

40 minutes

Take Action: Redesign a product

20 minutes

Reflection: Assess the positive impacts

Tune In: Meet Liam, the recycling robot

Step 1

Watch the following video with your class. Before playing the video, outline the definition of innovation and how it doesn’t necessarily mean making something completely brand new or different. It can be about creating new methods and modifying existing things. For example, the creative thinking technique SCAMPER was created to help designers be creative through modification rather than coming up with something new.

Liam: An innovation story - Apple (youtu.be/AYshVbcEmUc)

You may also like to show your students this interview with Close the Loop. This organisation drives innovation by helping people participate in the circular economy through three streams: taking back, recovering and reusing.

Close the Loop - Short (https://vimeo.com/842391949/00c149b2bb)

Step 2

Ask students to identify the materials that Liam extracts from the phone in their student worksheet.

Discuss the following with students

What is true innovation? How does Liam represent true innovation?
Which materials are high value? Why/why not?
Is plastic high value? Why/why not?
Consider a product and how plastic was used from when you purchased, unpacked, used and disposed of the product.

Find Out: Designing for value and product stewardship

Step 1

Introduce the concept of designing for value to your class.

Discuss with students what this term means and ask them to write their definition in the student worksheet.

Once students have suggested ideas, discuss designing for value in terms of raw materials, repair, access, community and skills. Please refer to the teacher content information to help guide your discussion.

Watch this video with your students from Play & Co, a sustainable design business, which talks about designing value and what this looks like.

Play & Co (https://vimeo.com/863863347?share=copy)

Step 2

Explain to students that one way of ensuring designed value is the concept of product stewardship. This is where people designing, manufacturing, and selling products are responsible for ensuring the product life cycle and supply chain are as sustainable as possible.

Watch the following video with your class, made specifically for this unit of lessons, from the Product Stewardship Centre of Excellence. Their mission is to increase the amount of product stewardship we see in our world by educating businesses and people about the impact of their products and life cycles and encouraging designing value.

Product Stewardship Centre of Excellence (https://vimeo.com/865840134?share=copy)

Discuss product stewardship and the producer's responsibility to reuse/recycle products with your class. Students could write their answers to these questions in the Student Worksheet.

Pose questions such as:

What is product stewardship?
Why is it important from a personal perspective? From an environmental perspective?
How are designing for value and product stewardship similar to each other?
How can products be directed back to manufacturers for upcycling/recycling?
How can producers make it easier for end users to return products?

Step 3

Divide students into groups of 3-4 and ask them to analyse an existing e-product and its materials. Students should complete the table in their worksheet as they research to decide the value of the materials, why they are used, the characteristics and properties of materials, and alternatives. Some products that could be researched include chargers/cables/powerbanks, phones, headphones, laptops and gaming consoles.

Encourage students to use simple research strategies such as typing ‘alternatives to iron’ in internet search bars and clicking links and reading through rather than just looking at the list of links.

The table below contains links to start students off on their research, as well as links that give a broader, more in-depth look at some of these products to help students with the Take Action section of this lesson.

Product	What’s in it	Go a little deeper–alternatives and interesting facts
Chargers, cables, power banks	Inside an E-Product: The Origin of Loop-E	Comsol interview Sustainable Jungle
Phones	Mobile Muster The Cycle of an iPhone	Fairphone
Headphones	Techwalla	Headphones from Biomaterials Fairphone
Laptops	Raw materials in computers	How Laptops Work
Gaming devices	How the Inside of Your Game Console Works	Project Re-Play
Hair Dryers	The Science Behind the Dyson Airwrap Styler How Hair Dryers Work	Discover the technology inside the Dyson Supersonic hair dryer

Product material
Value high/low
Why it is used
Characteristics/properties (e.g. flexible, lightweight, reflective)
Alternative material
Why alternative material is effective

Step 4

Ask students to find out the environmental consequences of extracting these materials and list them on their worksheet.

Take Action: Redesign a product

Step 1

Introduce students to the SCAMPER acronym. This technique is a form of creative brainstorming where you ask questions about existing products using each category. These questions help you come up with creative ideas for designed solutions.

Step 2

In their groups, ask students to redesign the product they have been researching with the following aspects in mind:

Environmental impacts
Design for repair
Access and community
Design for skills

Ask them to sketch ideas and brainstorm together using the SCAMPER acronym.

Source: https://www.edrawmind.com/article/what-is-scamper.html

Once the group has agreed on an idea, invite them to delegate members to:

Draw the overall idea
Draw a detail of the product/diagram to show the design for repair
Draw a detail of the product/diagram to show the design for access and community
Draw a detail of the product/diagram to show the design for skills

Step 3

Ask groups to display their redesigns around the classroom and have a representative stand with them.

Conduct a gallery walk so that students can view each other's work and ask questions of the representative.

Ask students to write down 1 positive and 1 question for every design they see.

Step 4

Pair up groups and ask them to do a more in-depth critique of each other's designs and their effectiveness.

Ask the groups to write something they see that is positive, negative and interesting for the group they are critiquing.

Invite each group pairing to present their critique to the rest of the class by conducting a conversation between the paired groups for a couple of minutes each. Invite other students to pose questions and comments if they have any.

Reflection

Pose the following questions to students:

What is the benefit of the SCAMPER technique?
What is the benefit of redesigning an existing product rather than creating a new one?

Designing for Value: Products Throughout Their Lifecycle

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Summary

Learning intentions:

Students will...

Success criteria:

Students can...

Lesson Guides and Printables

Lesson Details

Skills

Curriculum Mapping

Resources Required

UN Sustainable Development Goals

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