google-site-verification=Bi5tI8WZLmgLQCt3p-aIw8z5CkJAHeD9rrURuZtohHM Designing Products for Re-use - Human Factors Minute

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Designing Products for Re-use

Many plastics are used for single-use disposable applications, such as packaging, agricultural films and disposable consumer items, and is the main source of waste plastics.

Human factors plays a key role when considering the materials and design features of these plastics and can help manufacturers achieve functional yet reusable product designs. 

However, In many cases, reusable device manufacturers do not consider reprocessing until after the design is complete. 

One way in which Human Factors can impact these reusable products is through design considerations.

The choice of material is crucial for a product to ensure it is reusable, reliable, and durable.

Ensuring a device is reusable includes avoiding design decisions that create inaccessible areas or excessive wear by the user especially when considering devices that need to be cleaned and sterilized (like in the medical field). 

Ease of disassembly must also be considered when designing for reuse as users will be discouraged from recycling components and will simply trash the product instead.

Ensuring that a product is well designed for recycling at the end of its lifecycle is also another critical factor for reducing waste. 

Recycling may not be intuitive, so using clear labeling and providing instructions that are clear and well defined should adequately assist the end user with recycling the product. 

This is just one of the many ways in which Human Factors can contribute to ensure minimal waste makes it to the ocean

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Transcript

Many plastics are used for single-use disposable applications, such as packaging, agricultural films and disposable consumer items, and is the main source of waste plastics.

Human factors plays a key role when considering the materials and design features of these plastics and can help manufacturers achieve functional yet reusable product designs.

However, In many cases, reusable device manufacturers do not consider reprocessing until after the design is complete.

One way in which Human Factors can impact these reusable products is through design considerations.

The choice of material is crucial for a product to ensure it is reusable, reliable, and durable.

Ensuring a device is reusable includes avoiding design decisions that create inaccessible areas or excessive wear by the user especially when considering devices that need to be cleaned and sterilized (like in the medical field).

Ease of disassembly must also be considered when designing for reuse as users will be discouraged from recycling components and will simply trash the product instead.

Ensuring that a product is well designed for recycling at the end of its lifecycle is also another critical factor for reducing waste.

Recycling may not be intuitive, so using clear labeling and providing instructions that are clear and well defined should adequately assist the end user with recycling the product.

This is just one of the many ways in which Human Factors can contribute to ensure minimal waste makes it to the ocean

To donate to #teamseas or to find out more about the #teamseas campaign, visit teamseas.org

About the Podcast

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Human Factors Minute
(Presented by Human Factors Cast)

About your host

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Nick Roome

Nick is currently a Senior UX Researcher at Turvo in the Pacific Northwest, focused on developing innovative solutions and optimizing human performance for SaaS based supply chain logistics programs. Alongside colleague and friends, Blake Arnsdorff and Barry Kirby, Nick hosts and produces Human Factors Cast, a weekly podcast that investigates the sciences of human factors, psychology, engineering, biomechanics, industrial design, physiology and anthropometry and how it affects our interaction with technology. Nick’s other areas of interest include, but are not limited to virtual, augmented, and mixed reality, systems engineering, and artificially intelligent systems.

Nick Started Human Factors Cast in early 2016 as a side-project. He believed that the way Human Factors concepts were being communicated is broken and saw a way to fix it. After getting initial traction, Nick moved to work on the Human Factors Cast Digital Media Lab and began assembling a multi-disciplinary team to test out new concepts in Human Factors communication.