Draft+Overview+-SP

- The primary aims of this study are to examine past and current literature on sustainable product design of consumer goods and perhaps more specifically the product category of durable goods including consumer electronics. This is necessary in an effort to lead readers to consider what the future of product design should and will be like and what changed need to take place to get to the form of design that is desired. -The world is going to waste prosperity cannot last within the current paradigm unless we collectively do something to reverse current damaging trends or at least stop or slow them and start to integrate a more sustainable way of life and business practice. The goals of this thesis are within the scope of this way of reasoning and viewing what exists. Society has reached a rate of technological advancement and growth so rapid and consumerism become so embedded in our culture that our current rate of global resource consumption will be impossible to sustain in the long term. Consumer products are being used up, become useless, and end up in landfills at an alarming pace. -At this point in time in society, first world countries are living prosperously yet incredibly wastefully. This is not primarily the fault of consumers but that of the media and the craze of a consumerist culture marketed, embraced, and sustained by corporations, dependent on consumers urge to keep buying the new. These new products are all too often by no means far more functional than the previous generation, and yet, we buy them because we are under the impression we need to have them to keep up and be trending. This is the context of perceived and planned obsolescence and it is an incredibly unsustainable system. The main research questions are… to what extent and in what forms is planned obsolescence necessary and advantageous for consumers, innovation, and progress? How did we get to this type of destructive consumer culture? Could planned obsolescence become a more sustainable practice? What would be ideal and what would this take? -A large part of the paper will draw from previous literature relating to planned obsolescence. The goal is to examine the system from an entirely new perspective but in order to achieve this and come to new insights, the entire system must be thoroughly examined and highlights and key findings given in argument for why the thesis draws a particular conclusion. A full understanding is required not to fully convey to the audience but to fully understand the problems associated with the subject and all its subcomponents. Interviews are the ideal form of data acquisition for this study because this method can provide firsthand experiences with planned obsolescence and consumerism. Interview questions will be open ended and much of the focus of each will be on product frustrations and what interviewees would like from the future of product design to meet their needs. Hopefully, general themes will arise with enough participants. Interviews with field experts will also be utilized and leveraged in support of a central argument for the need for change within the system and perhaps even an entirely new model of global resource based infrastructure.
 * Overview **