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products that last – 15

This ongoing family ritual represents a minute part of a stream of mass production, consumption and destruction of zillions of goods. So, what’s new? Now imagine a different setting, one in which people lead a comfortable life without the constant noise of making and breaking products in the background. Companies focus on long-term convenience by offering products with lasting value and making a profit through exploiting and sustaining those products. This requires a drastic change towards entirely different ways of doing business and, consequent-ly, a shift in what designers should focus on. The easy part is that the basics for alternatives have been around for ages. It is just that never before were they regarded as ways to engage in trade with a view to the extension of product life and saving materials and energy. Products that Last, provides a range of business models and design strategies with examples and backgrounds. It intends to serve as an inspiration to make the change happen. It is essential, therefore, that the subject matter of Products that Last is kept simple and that the overview provided is a clear one.

It concerns a shift of emphasis in the way entrepreneurs and designers develop and exploit goods towards reduction of material and energy consumption over time. Nothing more, much less.

The effort to develop new ways of doing business is part of a sizeable and varied attempt to turn our currently fragile life style into one of which we can be fairly certain that we can sustain it well into the remote future.

Products that Last proposes useful methods and strat-egies. There are no generic rules. Each case requires its own specific recipe. It offers a different perspective on commonly used notions in the sustainability discourse. ‘Life cycle’ is probably the most important concept in the book. There are various categories of life cycles. The kind aimed for in Life Cycle Assessment, for example, represents environmental impact. In the book product life cycle mainly concerns value changes. The emphasis is on maintaining value.

Energy consumption is only partly relevant to product lifespan extension. It is not a significant element when it concerns the design of a specific electric dishwasher, because value is the main issue. But it is certainly

meaningful when the evolution of dish washing enters the picture. As technology develops over time, energy consumption per product is likely to decrease. The opti-mal product lifespan then is defined by the point in time where the environmental impact that arises from using a product equals the embedded impact of a - more energy efficient - replacement product. So, in some cases, early replacement can be an eco-effective strategy.

A similar evolution occurs in devices that produce and store energy, such as windmills, solar panels and batteries. For those it is important to note that they have a lifecycle too, in the 25 years range. This implies that their value is subject to cultivation as well. Free energy is so attractive that this fact is sometimes overlooked.

Using minimal amounts of material through thinking in lightweight structures has an aim similar to product lifespan extension. The former implies a direct reduction, the latter a reduction through intensified use. Both are in line with the adage of visionary designer Richard Buckminster Fuller: ‘Do more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing’. The many dome structures he designed are a close approximation. The future of technological development has a lot in store when we combine value cultivation with a diminished use of materials.

Perceived product value over time only partly depends on functional properties and the scenario of material interventions needed to keep the product going. Perceived meaning, the immaterial, storytelling element is equally important for maintaining its reputation. In practice this may concern branding, advertising and organising what could be called ‘image enhancing activities’. Up till now these efforts have been carried out exclusively within the linear model of design for sales, with the exception of the odd ‘lifelong guarantee’ advertisement. There are opportunities here that may affect the development of business models.

The last domain to be mentioned is history of design and commerce. Very little evidence is available regarding the relationship between assumptions about design and product longevity. The problem with the design of lasting products is that it must start out from speculation, and that it will by definition take a long time to be proven right. Historic longitudinal research could be of great value here. There is no future without learning from the past.

Some people own two functioning coffeemakers and a bunch of broken down ones stashed away somewhere. Sooner or later they will discard the wrecks, possibly when clearing up storage space. Or a functioning machine decides to start leaking and the owners decide to replace it with a brand-new and improved coffeemaker.

Long term framing