Objectives: The main question was whether the colour of a new design of pelvic examination chair could affect how the examination procedure was perceived. A prototype was constructed without vertical leg support and with built-in heating in the upholstery. To improve integrity, the perineum was exposed only during the examination. Main Outcome Measures: The patients were invited to evaluate the two different chair colours used, light blue and off-white, respectively. After vaginal ultrasound, the patients answered an anonymous questionnaire about their experience of the examination and how they perceived the comfort, warmth, integrity and colour of the chair. There were also questions regarding the absence of vertical leg support. Results: The questionnaire evaluation demonstrated the importance of colour since integrity was rated significantly higher in the light-blue chair than in the off-white. Similarly, the blue chair was experienced as significantly more comfortable than the white. Conclusions: The effect of colour was investigated in a new pelvic examination chair without vertical leg support, developed to suit men, women and also non-binary and transgender persons. It was also designed for increased comfort and integrity. The experience of colour had a significant positive (p < 0.001) effect on how the comfort, integrity and the absence of vertical leg support were perceived.

The consumption of plastics and the management of the generated amounts of plastic waste are two issues that have been some of the most prominent in the environmental debate in recent years. Today, large quantities of plastic waste from the Swedish manufacturing industry is generated that are not sorted for recycling but end up in combustible residual waste going to energy recovery, which means a significant waste of resources. Although large quantities of plastic waste originate from the manufacturing industry, the vast majority of initiatives related to a more resource-efficient management of plastic waste have focused on the plastic waste generated related to consumption. Relatively little focus has been on the primary plastic waste generated from the manufacturing industry. The purpose of this project has been to contribute to increase the source sorting and recycling of plastic waste from the Swedish manufacturing industry. The goals were to identify and evaluate significant barriers faced by the Swedish manufacturing industry to increase the sorting of plastic in Sweden and to propose how the sorting of the plastic waste can increase. The project and its results were based on a survey answered by manufacturing companies, which was supplemented by interviews with waste and recycling actors. 

Användardriven förpackningsdesign har varit fokus i arbetspaket 4. Detta har bland annat inneburit enkätstudier med över 90 seniorer i samarbete med PRO, etnografiska studier i hemmamiljö samt hanteringsstudier och fokusgrupper där förpackningar har testats och utvärderas. Konceptutvecklingen har således skett iterativt med slutanvändare och förfinats med hjälp av vunna konsumentinsikter. Även lärdommar från litteraturen och nyutgiven standard för lättöppnade förpackningar har legat till grund för arbetet. En ledstjärna har varit att måltiden är en social aktivitet som delas med andra, förpackningen och dess innehåll bör tilltala alla 5 sinnen och locka till aptit. Projektet har därför fokuserat både på funktionalitet och upplevelsen av måltiden. Viktiga insikter som tagits hänsyn till är förpackningens hanterbarhet, i synnerhet öppningsaspekten som påverkas av såväl den äldres handstyrka och fingerfärdighet samt storlek och utformning på förpackningens greppyta. Förpackningen bör vidare intuitivt förklara hur den ska användas (öppnas, värmas etc), och information bör ges med så lite text som möjligt. Genomtänkt textstorlek och kontrast är viktigt för att den äldre ska kunna ta till sig informationen på förpackningen.Insikterna från studierna har implementerats i förpackningskoncept för huvudmål, dessert och mellanmål I samarbete med arbetspaket 5 har förpackningarna modulanpassats efter gastronormsystemet för att möjliggöra skalbarhet och därmed optimal effektivitet i distributionskedjan.

Sverige har en stark möbelindustri och en stolt tradition av att tillverka tidlösa och högkvalitativa möbler, ofta av naturmaterial. 2016 producerade Sverige möbler för 22,8 miljarder SEK, varav kontorsmöbler stod för nästan en fjärdedel1. Det saknas idag statistik över vad som händer med dessa möbler när de inte längre används, men det står klart att många av dem slängs i förtid när verksamheter flyttar eller när deras behov ändras. Samtidigt syns en tydlig utveckling mot att kunder mer och mer efterfrågar återbrukade eller renoverade möbler som en del i sitt hållbarhetsarbete. Denna utveckling var startpunkten för projektet ”Affärsmodell-innovation för cirkulära möbelflöden”. Affärsmodellinnovation för cirkulära möbelflöden är ett Vinnovafinansierat projekt som under åren 2015-2017 arbetat med att utveckla och testa koncept för cirkulära affärsmodeller för i första hand offentliga möbler. I projektet har tjugo aktörer från hela värdekedjan, från underleverantörer, möbelproducenter, återförsäljare och användare till forskare och branschorgan, samarbetat kring affärsutveckling, kundincitament, produktdesign, logistik, hållbarhets- och certifieringsfrågor. Den här skriften belyser hur nya affärsmodeller för mer cirkulära möbelflöden kan bidra till en mer hållbar utveckling och ger smakprov på slutsatser från projektet. Skriften riktar sig framför allt till producenter och återförsäljare av möbler för offentliga miljöer, men även kunder och inköpare tror vi kan ha stor nytta av skriften. Vi hoppas att den även kan fungera som inspiration för andra industrier och branscher som funderar på en övergång till mer cirkulära affärsekosystem.

To help bridge the gap between the science lab and commercial production there is a need for a better understanding of how new bio-based materials are perceived by users. The aim of the studies in this paper was to identify the material expression, sensorial properties and semantic dimensions of a group of pulp-fibre reinforced composites that are still in the research phase and how these relate to other, better-known materials already on the market. The studies involved 21 different materials, divided into different material groups such as metals, solid woods, wood fibre materials, plastic and fibre-reinforced composites in which the pulp-fibre reinforced composites were included. The materials were evaluated for meaning in a product semantic study and for sensory perception in a sensorial study. The results of the semantic study gave two underlining dimensions explaining most of the variations between the materials, Quality and Naturalness. These dimensions also had strong correlations to some of the sensorial properties. The results indicate that the pulp-fibre reinforced composites were not perceived as having high quality or expressing naturalness. They were hard to distinguish from the plastics in the study. The implications for further research and material development are discussed.

In moving towards a cellulose-based society, interdisciplinary effort is required as it is at this interface that new ideas are found and can grow. New bio-based materials will play a key role but getting them into the marketplace is not always straightforward. Many options are available both for sourcing and for producing composite materials from wood-based cellulose and poly-lactic acid (PLA). Depending on how the material is processed, a multitude of properties can be generated. The main goal with this work was to attempt to reduce the research-To-market gap. This was done by testing a new way of working together where we bundled innovation-oriented projects and research-oriented projects around the theme of material experience. We then systematically worked with material demonstrators. In this article, we exemplify the results by focusing on one research-oriented project that did not at the outset have a market context and on one innovation-oriented project with clear market requirements. In addition to introducing a new concept in bundling research-oriented and innovation-oriented projects, this paper contributes several practical examples of what material demonstrators can do. We also present an application and analysis of Moultrie’s extended Science-Technology-Application-Market (STAM) model to analyze the material demonstrators and design phases of the bundled projects. We modified the proposed classification with different types of material demonstrators according to how close they are to an actual product segment. Designers and scientists worked together but with different emphasis in each phase.

Matching market demands and technological solutions is not always straightforward. In this article, we report on one material, a cellulose-PLA multimaterial, which was made on a full-scale pilot paper machine and adapted to five different market applications having specialized and often conflicting demands. The material can be injection molded, 3D-printed, hot pressed, treated as a textile, used in a laminate, or converted as a paper board, giving it a wide range of possible properties depending on how it is processed.The five application areas presented here were identified as gaps in the marketplace where seemingly conflicting needs were desired: opacity and transparency; compact for transport but having an expanded size during use; stiffness and flexibility; strength and light-weight; and durability and degradability. These properties are exemplified in a number of material and product demonstrators, illustrating how tailored solutions can give products with distinctly different personalities. The material can be made flexible and given movement as graceful as the wing of a bird or be processed to be strong and light-weight enough to be used in vehicles like airplanes. By having one material that is produced on a large scale, but then processed according to specific market demands and expectations, the gap between needing scale and needing scope is bridged.

The feeling of softness and smoothness of paper tissue products is an important performance factor in the market place. In a series of panel tests, the relationship between instrumental measurements and perceived softness and smoothness was investigated. Samples of tissue base paper – napkin and toilet paper – were evaluated for surface roughness. The samples were placed on a hard, smooth glass substrate and the respondents used one finger to stroke along the sample surface. Instrumental measurement and characterization were performed using differentinstruments: Emtec TSA and Lena Softness Tester. The results divide the base paper material into product groups, but general mathematical relationships could be found between the test panel and the measurements when normalized in different ways. Measurements using the Lena produced the best correlation with the panel ratings because its principle resembled the method of the test panel most closely. However, a general relationship usingmaterial properties was shown to produce as good an estimator for the surface roughness as the results obtained with the Lena. This relationship consisted of the ratio between the plasticity and the elasticity of the tissue paper (in-plane properties), normalized for thickness. This suggests that those three material properties are fundamental to the perception of surface roughness as evaluated in this study. Using a trained haptic panel to evaluate test samples of similar grammage with variations in furnish and machine operation settings generated a good correlation to the TSA measurement (r=0.9). The panel was more susceptible to variation in furnish than variation in peak pressure, and this was particularly evident for samples evaluated on the Yankee side.

Package design includes a number of considerations ranging from protecting the content to conveying the brand image. The aim of this study was to gain a deeper understanding on how Swedish consumes perceive product packaging attributes, with a special emphasis on in which way packaging material (carton, paper plastic), and structural design (folding carton, paper bag, standing pouch and plastic bag), have an emotional impact on consumers' evaluation of the product and packaging. Assessing the appearance and effectiveness of a packaging system is often confounded by branding, why it is important to separate the brand influence from the attributes of the packaging system. Thus, in the experimental part, packaging prototypes of different structural design and materials were manufactured in order to present commercial cereal brands in different types of packaging. The research involved a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, comprising (i) focus groups on cereal (muesli) packaging; (ii) a mock-up study of four muesli packaging types: transparent plastic bag, carton box, paper bag, and a resalable stand-up plastic pouch; and (iii) a questionnaire on environmental attitudes to packaging materials. Fourteen respondents participated in the focus groups and 20 in the mock-up study. Result show that the paper bag and the carton box were perceived to be the most environmentally friendly packaging material. Heavy ink usage on paper bags and carton boxes can however raise concern regarding the environmental impact. Introducing functionality and good print quality can cause preferences to divert to an alternative packaging material. In the mock-up study the standing pouch was the most liked package type regardless of brands. Functional reasons (protect, re-closable etc.) and appearance reasons (nice print, nice colours) was claimed for giving this package high ratings.