Repair-oriented design for extending circularity, a holistic design setting assessment on the digital electronic products

• Developed a comprehensive set of correlations between design parameters and repair efficiency metrics, providing actionable insights for designers and manufacturers. • Demonstrated the crucial interplay between technical design aspects (e.g., modularity, diagnostic tools) and human factors (e.g., clear labeling, safety measures) in enhancing product repairability. • Identified strong correlations between user-friendly design elements and repair efficiency, addressing the skill gap in self-repair and potentially increasing user engagement in repair activities. • Highlighted the importance of incorporating product lifecycle information into the design process, offering a proactive approach to facilitating future repairs. • Provided quantitative evidence linking design parameters to repair outcomes, offering a practical framework for implementing circular economy principles in electronic product design. Increasing product lifespan via its repairability has become a key pillar of sustainable design, however, the existing initiatives remain scattered and fall short in equipping stakeholders for facing with real repair problems of electronic products. Current circular design guidelines and repairability standards predominantly address technical aspects such as disassembly protocols and do not consider human-factor impediments that arguably have the most significant effect on repair outcomes on the shop floor. To bridge this gap, the present research introduces a holistic repair-oriented design approach merging the technical and user aspects in the concept design stage to support predictable repairability and circularity. A structured checklist was created to operationalize this framework, which allows designers and manufacturers to quantitatively assess electronic products on a scale the repair after previous repair influencing parameters of accuracy, accessibility, speed, safety, fault diagnosis and user skill support. The checklist was validated through expert assessments from professional technicians and examined across a diverse set of electronic consumer products. Reliability analysis using Cronbach’s alpha confirmed acceptable internal consistency. Correlational analysis by testing 86 significant positive and negative correlations among the 703 comparisons provided evidence of multiple positive and negative relationships among parameters, revealing how specific design decisions may simultaneously facilitate or hinder different aspects of the repair process. These findings demonstrate the importance of balancing both technical architecture and user interaction within product design to achieve effective reparability. This circular design study provided practical design priorities and offers actionable guidance for enhancing sustainable practices in future electronic product development.