Understanding Industrial Design

Chapter 4. Enduring

Create long-lasting value

What works good is better than what looks good, because what works good lasts.

—CHARLES EAMES

DESIGNERS STRIVE TO IMPROVE THE WORLD, looking for user needs and situations where a new product or experience could make a difference. The human-centered design process, with its inspiration and input from users, provides confidence that a solution will work today but often has less consideration for the future. Needs change, technology expands, and context shifts. Beyond fulfilling the needs of today, how can a design create long-lasting value?

The reasons to create a new product are usually well intentioned, but in the mid-20th century a less honorable purpose for newness was popularized. Planned obsolescence became a common business strategy to incentivize customers to keep buying. In this approach, products are purposefully designed to be replaced on a regular basis, due to artificially limited durability or the psychological obsolescence of yearly model updates.^[93] There is little regard for the long-term needs of users and even less for ecological sustainability. As we will discuss in Chapter 7, designers have a responsibility to avoid unnecessary waste and disposal. Longer-lasting products are better for users and for the environment.

When discussing the quality and longevity of products, a common trope is that “they don’t make them like they used to.” This attitude is usually paired with an example of an enduring product, one that someone ...