How can a designer increase the degree to which people bond with a product? This is the question researcher Ruth Mugge tackled, who has recently received her PhD degree on this topic at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering of Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands.

If people feel strongly attached to a product, they are also more likely to handle the product with care, to repair it when it breaks down, and to postpone its replacement as long as possible. Product attachment may thus increase a product's lifetime and reduce the demand for scarce resources and the rate of solid waste disposal. From the viewpoint of sustainability, it can therefore be valuable for designers to influence the degree of attachment people experience to their products.

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