Investigating the life-span of cork products for household and personal use through a longitudinal approach with users

• Author(s): Pereira, Ana Carina da Silva
• Date: 2014
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/7830
• Origin: Repositório da UTL
• Subject(s): ecodesign; life-span; cork products; use and users; longitudinal study
• Document Type: Doctoral thesis
• Language: English
• Advisor(s): Pereira, Helena Margarida Nunes
• Contributor(s): Repositório da Universidade de Lisboa

Description

Doutoramento em Engenharia do Ambiente - Instituto Superior de Agronomia

Products with a long life-span are important to reduce resources consumption and outflows to the environment. Cork has an interesting eco-profile since it is a natural non-wood forest product that can be produced without endangering the cork oak vitality. The aim of the work is to investigate the life-span of cork products. A total of 18 different cork products including household and personal use products were studied with 31 users. In the context of design this is cumulative user experience (cumulative UX). The methods used were interviews and photographs, and these were performed at different moments in time: 3 months, 8 months, 16 months, and 2 years. In most cork products everything was fine; the products are still in good condition, users are satisfied, and the evaluations are good, very good, and excellent. There were some problematic cases which enabled to learn more, in particular about the cork materials employed. Besides, most issues arising are related with darkening, sometimes also referred to as dirt, with a pejorative meaning, or ageing which is acceptable like leather. Overall, the approach retrieved interesting and important information about the life-span of the products