Scooch Over, There’s Room for Us Too Inviting Consumers into the Design of Digital Product Passports for Furniture

Abstract

As the European Union drives the transition toward a circular economy through frameworks like the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), the Digital Product Passport (DPP) has emerged as a vital infrastructure to ensure product traceability. While macro-level initiatives like the FRANCESCA project establish the technical data requirements for high-impact sectors such as furniture, a critical knowledge gap remains regarding how end-consumers interact with this information. This thesis addresses the prominent intention-behavior gap that prevents well-meaning consumers from executing sustainable choices at the point of purchase by investigating how user interface design can transform raw lifecycle data into actionable behavioral prompts. Guided by a Research through Design (RtD) framework, the project progressed through three iterative macro-phases: pre-design, generative, and evaluative. Current consumer behavior was first mapped using exploratory user interviews. These insights informed a co-design workshop where participants utilized physical generative toolkits to translate their mental models into future interface requirements, focusing heavily on the two distinct contexts: acquisition and long-term ownership. The final outcome of this process is a mobile DPP prototype. Empirical evaluations of the prototype reveal that successfully catering to user needs requires a careful balance between rapid interaction and data verification. The prototype successfully bridges the cognitive gaps prevalent at the point of purchase by translating complex environmental data into tangible product value. It supports the user in navigating dense regulatory information and allows sustainable trade-offs to be evaluated without inducing decision fatigue.