Poster first Draft.

Poster Text

Products are made to be just products. There is very little consideration into their life beyond their usage and the way they are made.

“80% of a product, service, or systems, environmental impact is determined at the design stage.” Whether that is how consumers use the product, how the product is disposed of or the way it comes down the assembly line. All factors can be considered and determined at the design stage. Sustainability and longevity should be a new cornerstone for ‘good design’. Designers should always factor in the environmental impact of their products when they are being created.

Collaborative Consumption is one of many ways this is already being done. This is where goods and services aren’t owned by a single user, instead they are temporarily accessed by members of a network and anything that is underused gets shared. This new business model incentivises designing products to last as they acquire money per units-usage instead of per units-sold. The longer a product last the more money service providers will get out of it.

Onzo Bikes, as an example, have to consider not only how the bikes are used but also things like; how do they last when they’re left outside in a storm, how do we efficiently fix them when they are faulty, how can we avoid them being vandalised? All of these considerations contribute to a longer lasting product that serves not just one user, but many.

Hello-Fresh is an example of food being consumed collaboratively. The service buys ingredients in bulk and distributes them out into each consumers box to be delivered to their door. Immediately this becomes more sustainable as there is less individualised packaging from buying in bulk and less waste produced due to consumers getting no more than the recipe requires. Hello-Fresh then goes the extra mile by making as much of its packaging components as recyclable as possible and anything that can’t be recycled gets collected the following week to be reused.

Friday class

I put my poster up on the wall and had a few chats with classmates. This helped further refine my thoughts and clarified that what was on my poster wasn’t exactly what was in my head. It’s not clear enough that my intentions are about designing for a new business model. An interesting idea that was tossed around was an example of a watch subscription that allowed users to pay a weekly/monthly/annually payment and received a watch for the time they were paying. This allowed them to swap and change watches for different occasions.

Lee Jensen

I find that talking to Lee is always very helpful for me as he is able to help refine my ideas into something useable. In this circumstance he pushed my project and suggested a few things I look into.

Further distillation of my concept so far

• Most products are built to expire (planned obsolescence). This is taken so far at times, that companies trick us into thinking our working products are shit before they have even expired (perceived obsolescence).
• Unwanted products, either take up space in our homes, end up in landfills, or return to the manufacturers (so they can build more products).
• Products need to be designed for longevity. Designed to endure any circumstance. A consumer that purchases products that last longer won’t need to consume as many products. The less products someone consumes the less products that end up in landfills.
• A service that relies on a pay-per-use business model, incentivises better design of their products. A product that lasts longer has potential to make more money in its longer lifetime than a product that expires quickly. (Reduces units created for companies, results in better products for consumers). This is opposed to the per-units-sold business model.