Iran University of Science and Technology's Outdoor Set Furniture Design Based on Components of Sustainable Development

Today, sustainable development has a key role in national policy. A strong case has been made for the need for communities to pursue economic, social, and environmental policies and practices that will reduce the risks associated with present practices, that will be sustainable in long run, and that will enhance the well-being of future generation. With this approach, many universities in Iran like other organization; try to explain sustainability requirements for future to improve the situation and promote sustainable development concepts. On the other hand,the largest concentration of higher education in Iran is on formal learning and planning of sustainability which consequently focus on formal learning spaces and cause inattention to informal learning spaces. The purpose of a university is to bring together diverse people and their ideas in an environment that create potential for intellectual and social exchange in cultural context.Therefore, this research focused on importance of outdoor furniture with sustainability approach and user- centered design (UCD) method in Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST) to respond to needs of student to interaction and participation in university environment.For successful user centered design method, all the parts of process have been planned and managed. This strategic activity was performed by bringing together in a meeting all the stakeholders relevant to the development, to create a common vision for how usability can support the project objectives. In the next step, all the users and other stakeholders have been identified, who may be impacted by the outdoor furniture. In this field, observation and interview with students in university was done in real condition. Thereupon, it was necessary to elicit existing furniture problems and identify context- of- use and using situation of Iran University of Science and Technology’s outdoor environments. According to this assay, user and university requirements have been specified by user requirement interviews. The result of interviews showed inappropriate outdoor furniture in Iran University of Science and Technology. After requirements elicitation and analysis, the samples of outdoor furniture at other universities have been studied from the viewpoints of color, shape, materials and their situation in environment. This research revealed the use of harmonic materials in outdoor furniture design with existing buildings in these universities. In the creative,idea generation phase of the problem solving process, brainstorming session brought a set of design and task expert to inspire each other. Finally one idea wasselected and software prototyping was provided to create a greater level of realism than paper mockups. This set furniture has been inspired from Persian garden and its cross form to create closed loop. During this study, evaluation was conducted in several stages. In each stage;requirements of design was evaluated by experts and different users to identify and fix usability problems. The final concept was examined by end- users; that was included 25 men and women from each gender. The result showed that the finaloutdoor furniture concept has been able to satisfy users’ expectation considerably and lead institution of university toward sustainable development.