Tutorial sustainable innovations - An innovative role-play concept for education

Developing sustainable products is no easy task. For designers, this means that not only technical requirements for functional performance but also ecological, economic and social requirements have to be met. Besides comprehensive knowledge in the field of sustainable product development also persistence is demanded. This is due to the fact that designers often have to defend sustainable solutions more intensively than conventional solutions, so that decision makers in companies do not reject solutions prematurely for instance due to higher manufacturing costs. Therefore, a course at the TU Darmstadt was set up which has the goal to not only impart knowledge to the students in the field of the development of sustainable products but also to deliberately introduce them to coporate daily life. This Tutorial Sustainable Innovations (TutSI) is based on an innovative role-play concept, in which students work in interdisciplinary teams and have to present and defend their solutions in regular quality gates to a management board of a fictive company. Moreover, students learn how to integrate all three dimensions of sustainability into the design process from the beginning.