Products that Last. Conny Bakker
materials.
Loads of reasons
Life expectancy at birth in the UK, 1930-2011, female (green) and male (red) Source: Office for National Statistics, UK.
Lamps, compact fluorescent (CFL)
Vacuum cleaners
Wash dryers and centrifuges
Refrigerators
Dishwashers
Small IT and accessories
Tools
Small toys
Mobile phones
Washing machines
Laptop PCs
Hot water and coffee
Printing and imaging equipment
Microwaves
Small consumer electronics and accessories
A bike is a beautiful example of a modular system that is easy to repair. The parts are standardized and come in a range of different colours and qualities. In theory it is possible to buy each part separately and assemble a totally custom bike. While the basic design of a bicycle hasn’t changed much over the past century, parts like disc brakes and belt drives are still being improved to increase durability and facilitate maintenance (Images by Budnitz bicycles, budnitzbicycles.com).
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a shame if something we have used for some time has to ‘die’ because it fails to fulfil our needs any longer, and we may consider letting it live’ for a bit longer. On the other hand, the purchase of a ‘new and improved’ successor promises a satisfactory experience. The decision to buy is quite complicated and depends on a great number of things. The point is that in general most products are expected to last, just like people. It is not exceptional that the first reaction to failure is to consider repair or some other measure, to restore the product to an acceptable level. Deep down one wants to hold on to it, as long as it doesn’t draw the wrong kind of attention. Here we have an intriguing seesaw with, on the one end, the traditional one way trip from production to garbage, with a bit of excite-ment somewhere along the way, and on the other, the development of ways to create enduring products, and cause a shift in what people spend money on. Lasting products are preferable.
The decisive edge to shifting the seesaw towards sustainability rests within the second domain, and can only be obtained through the development of new kinds of trade, to which end designers and producers will need to understand the principles. This constitutes the second domain: taking up the challenge.
This book gives you the basics. In addition, it is important to become aware of what makes trade tick; it may very well be the same force that drives consumption: convenience. Making a profit and satisfy-ing your investors quickly and with little effort is essential. The other requirement is that your business is based on a credible challenge which is also exciting and fun to tackle.
Products with a long lifespan can offer a wide range of business opportunities, depending of course on the type of product and its design. Cars are a good exam-ple - to a certain extent. They are traditional providers of after-sales business: they need continuous repair and maintenance and, they can be rented, shared and leased. This implies more intensive use, which represents a different view on lifespan extension, and may invoke different quality requirements and therefore a different design outcome.
Rex, the world’s first bionic man, modeled after University of Zurich psychologist Bertoit Meyer has synthetic blood, artificial organs and robotic limbs. Retinal and cochlear implants allow him to see and hear. All of his components could theoretically be welded to a human body to replace missing or worn out parts.
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Hiroshi Fuji, ‘Where have all these toys come from?’ The exhibition took ‘kaeru’ as its theme (meaning to change, to return, to exchange) and brought together over 50,000 toys gathered over 13 years of Japanese toy exchange systems.
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The comparison with less self-evident examples such as coffeemakers, furniture, digital information devices, pianos, ladders, microwaves, skateboards and even knickknacks – to name but a few, is likely to provide ideas for existing after-sales business, but could be ‘internalised’ into systematic design and responsible entrepreneurship. Consequently, these products could be improved on to extend the lifespan of a product. In other words, observing examples might, with a little imagination, produce arguments for lifespan extension in the guise of interesting questions. Making products last is a challenge.
The third domain is the best known. Mankind produces and consumes too much ‘stuff’. It has become an addiction, which is a conse-quence of being trapped in the vicious circle of cheap production to satisfy mass markets and being forced to sell vast numbers to be able to produce cheaply. Because of this, the number of products sold needs to grow continuously.
Part of this can be considered as compensation for population growth (which also has its limits) and emerging trade, but sooner or later successful markets will become saturated. When that happens, a limited lifespan becomes an economic necessity, because replacement purchases are all that remain. From then on, new and cheap will reign.
There are three ways in which this economic pressure has its effect. The first, obviously, is that what little attention there was for product lifespan will be reversed. This is the direct result of the guiding principles of reducing and externalising costs in traditional linear business and product development: design something, manufacture it at the lowest possible cost, sell it at the highest possible margin and forget it as soon as feasibly possible. Secondly, products age in relation to the context. If they happen to contain elements that improve very fast as a result of clearly aimed technological development, their overall ageing speed will increase ‘against the will’ of some of the more steadfast components. It is no revelation to state that the development speed of electronics is so high that it is virtually impossible to purchase anything really new in that field. ‘New and improved’ is already looking over your shoulder when you are in the middle of a purchasing decision. Finally, in the third place, there is deliberate product ageing, in style or in functionality: planned obsolescence, as mentioned in the previous chapter.
Although it is not usually subject to scrutiny, there are indications that a product’s lifespan is shorter than before. A survey of a range of standard electrical household products in the Netherlands between 2000 and 2005 showed a lifespan decrease in all but one, which happened to be the compact fluorescent lamp - a relatively new item which has a reputation for longevity to live up to. The lifespan of small consumer electronics decreased by 20 per cent, which can partly be explained by the abovementioned high-speed development of digital technology.
The observed lifespan decrease also coincided with considerable economic growth seen at that specific period. It is not improbable that since the credit crunch in 2008, acquisition of replacements has become less affordable to most people in the West. It is quite likely that product lifespan correlates to economy, but this subject has not been explicitly explored.
Continuously increasing production, particularly combined with the growing demand for commodities in emerging large economies and their ability to produce quite cheaply for the rest of the world, inevitably affects the economic availability of material resources. Prices, on average, have gone up and - even more detrimental - have become more volatile. Therefore, retaining value throughout a product’s life through careful management is the sensible thing to do.