Vicky Lofthouse

I am Senior Lecturer in the Design School at Loughborough University, a visiting lecturer for the Institute for Design Innovation at Loughborough University London and leader of the Sustainable Design Research Group.

In a nutshell I am interested in how to make design better - better for the environment and better for society. This desire has led to a vision...

"To equipe designers with the knowledge, skills, interest, support and environment they need to create socially and environmentally responsible products, services and systems as part of the mainstream work"

I like to take a very practical approach to my research and seek to collaborate with companies to ensure that my research outputs are highly relevant and valuable. These collaborations have seen me work with a wide range of large and small organisations over the years.

Specialities include:

- Understanding how to enable industrial design practitioners to engage in more responsible design

- Helping companies integrate ecodesign into their product development process and sustainable design into their business practices.

- Communicating ecodesign and sustainable design issues to designers

- Identifying opportunities arising from the challenges of sustainable design requirements

- Practical experience of creating and using ecodesign tools acroos the board from school children to CEOs

- Understanding how to help designers more effectively think about social issues (see my Social Issues cards)

- Sustainable packaging - especially refillable packaging

- Developing educational material

- Workshop development and facilitation

- Using creativity techniques to encourage future thinking

- Project management using Grove visualisation techniques