Draft+Literature+Review+-SP


 * Literature Review**

Industrialization has brought about incredible change. Technology has helped lift millions out of poverty and improved the standard of living for a considerable amount of the planet. There is a downward spiral of commoditization and it has become apparent that we need new choices new strategies for both products and the design strategies through which they come into being, that result in differences that matter. This document serves as a literary review centering on the subject of sustainable design and the future of design practice. There are various themes common throughout the literatures that I have chosen to drive upon and contribute to in my own work. These themes referenced core categories and rephrased descriptions.

In the work Made to break: Technology and obsolescence in America, the author describes the circumstances through which the practice of planned obsolescence came into widespread acceptance and adoption in our inevitable consumerist culture. Although at times, it seems his tangents were off-topic and irrelevant to the main point of the chapters, the examples described in a chronological order which explore the background of how the practice of design for obsolescence came into the mainstream are adequately supported and very useful for a general understanding of the practices emergence. One example which stood out was Ford Motor Company and the story of how automotive competitors, unable to match the functional reliability and performance of Ford’s model T, resorted to appealing to consumer’s aesthetic desires by offering cars in different colors and adding stylistic streamline shapes to cars that served no practical function other than appearance. This trend in the automotive industry drove aesthetic trends in the sphere of consumer products and the inevitable rise of industrial design after the industrial revolution was well underway. The intentional sabotage of pipelines designed for the Soviet Union by the United States during the cold war introduced the practice of intentional precisely planned design for failure into the engineering profession. The ethical dilemmas behind planned and perceived obsolescence are discussed at great depths in this work. Many of the author’s views and examples serve in support of the perception that planned obsolescence in its current form, pursued for the sake of profit and repeat purchasing, is an unethical practice and should be terminated. In the latter chapters of this book, the author does attempt to propose possible alternatives to doing things and supports the idea that there are cost-effective methods that are far more sustainable including modularization and anything but cradle-to-grave design. The author’s chapter on consumer electronics and cell phones specifically is particularly interesting to my area of study. Cell phones and other similar products have the highest rate of production and market prevalence yet the shortest product lifecycles of any consumer-products. It is also interesting to note the accuracy of many of the predictions of this book and placing cellphones at the forefront of the technological revolution and generational divide. Although written a few years back, this work is still entirely relevant and the problems proposed and elaborated upon have yet to be solved. Many of the possible alternative solutions proposed have been put into practice and it would seem as though some, most notably cradle to cradle, have merit to a certain extent.

The work Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things although somewhat outdated and its proceeding book The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability - Designing for Abundance by the same authors, describe a new alternative means of production and product manufacturing and introduce new ways of looking at how we design and produce products. They argue that we could be designing developing and making artifacts for people that actually contribute that and provide nutrients to the earth after their initial intended use/function. In their first work cradle to cradle some of the examples given where rudimentary and preliminary results and not shown to have been sustainable in the long term like the example of the rug carpeting made of nutrient rich renewable biodegradable materials. To in reading this book, I was, and still remain skeptical of many of the practices concerning their practicality under certain design constraints and circumstances and high-tech industries such as microprocessor manufacturing and meeting required standards without compromising functionality. It almost seems as if they have a limited view and an idealistic approach to all consumer product designed as a general blanket treatment for a far more complex system of problems that is consumer product design. Throughout these works, and they talked much of product lifecycle yet I found it interesting that there was far less of an emphasis on the durability of tools and goods and how long products were to be in a particular market. To fill this gap, I looked at the work by Tim Cooper works by him most notably; his compilation of works he edited called Longer Lasting Products: Alternatives to the Throwaway Society. This works stands as the primary literature that I will draw from and reference in my own work. Although focusing mainly on the perspectives of sustainability experts in the UK, the views of these experts are entirely relevant and the issues discussed are not soled even over the many years some of the contributions to this work have existed. One core concept that was proposed in this work is that under certain circumstances design process timeline should be extended so that time is put into the design so that various sustainability factors can be considered and entire lifecycle of the product can be analyzed and accounted for. Although I did propose the same suggested change initially and came to the same conclusion independent of my discovery of this literature, the problem I see is that the pace of innovation is or possibly could be hindered by our slowed pace of the design process or an extension of it. The importance of getting products to market as fast as possible may need to be reconsidered, but currently, getting market advantage and testing out different aspects of the product is what gets companies ahead. This brings up an interesting point related to planning everything out and trying to account for so many different variables. Once a well thought out product is actually used by consumers or users in the market, only then can the actual confirm the success of various features and innovations and design of the product as a whole. For design teams to be able to evaluate changes and iterations made based on user feedback, initial market introduction is necessary but that product’s lifecycle is guaranteed to be shorter. These are the current driving forces in the market that would lead one to the conclusion that within this current frame of competitive business, many new products in untested markets are built on unsustainable and eco-damaging models with unavoidable but accepted. This is where a contradiction arises where we try to be sustainable by planning things out and considering how essential it is to adequately design for users so as to not waste product generations and materials on the product that didn't meet user needs. On the other hand, it seems that the most effective way to discover these nieces through testing it out in the market with minimum viable products.

The argument that the fastest path to market brings the most profit in the end is articulated in the work From Concept to Consumer: How to Turn Ideas into Money. This book also stresses the importance of industrial design and good design practice and it's important for the success of the product and meeting users’ needs and latent needs. The author argues that a well design product would not cost more than a poorly designed product. And in the long term, the company will be far more profitable from increase sales due to more well-thought-out design experiences. Examples are given of product market fit from this work. The book illustrates the challenges and best recommendations for getting the product to market successfully while profiting as a company. There is much to critique of this work in terms of sustainable design as it was only mentioned briefly at the end and did not adequately emphasize this is the main criteria or anything of importance for what business leaders and inventor should consider when making their ideas reality. This disregard for the full impact of a products creation is all too common in industry.

One of the more well-known works that I have chosen to include, review, and critique is The story of stuff: How our obsession with stuff is trashing the planet, our communities, and our health-and a vision for change. Most popularly known from the viral video online, this work examines the true story behind where our stuff comes from how it is used and where it ends up. The author claims that the story we've been told about our products is often not the true story of the lifecycle of a given consumer product and we often don't think about it after it is thrown out. My view is this is an elementary and superficial book and not a very credible source. All one has to do is look at the actual critique YouTube videos on this and look at the validity of sources reference to realize that the author filed to do her research but the story that she describes is so shocking and simple to understand that it has spread like a virus. Despite the simplifications of various ideas and the narrow mindedness and one sidedness of her argument, she has had a profound effect and reached a wide audience and some of the ideas are actually legitimate and widely agreed upon by most. Some of these key points being the need for change in certain aspects of waste management and how we treat the earth and think of product lifecycle. The questioning of the current systems and business practice and business as usual in the story of stuff has led me to examine the validity of the current systems under which I have questioned the possibility of more sustainable sign. This has resulted in my curiosity as to different individuals’ viewpoints on alternative systems under which a more feasible scheme could be operated toward a sustainable future of product design and production.

The Zeitgeist Movement and the Venus Project outline a different way of viewing these things where production is based on a resource-based economy local sourcing and utilization of automation and technology in 3-D printing and more to optimize the design of the objects we use every day. These social reform projects connect well to the ideas of collaborative design and intellectual property the patent system and incentives for contributing and counteracting the complexity of design with design tools. The complexity of design in certain circumstances were compromises are be made. This is linked to idea generation and constraints and the process of innovation. Updating the process of innovation and culture for innovation within businesses as well as seeing things differently and asking the right question and teaching people how to look at the world in a different way are all detailed in Tim Brown’s work Change by Design.

The works I have reviewed on innovation encourage new insights at any level of the corporation. Need from innovation to interview progress change and incremental product generation and updates, the sustainability extent of this, and iteration and evolution versus revolution. As well as disruptive change versus incremental design and the advantages and disadvantages of both in the definitions and what is required for both and how to get to specific desired outcomes based on a model of sustainability and profitability or practical perspective are all elaborated.

References

Baker, Phil. From Concept to Consumer: How to Turn Ideas into Money. FT Press, 2008.

Brown, Tim. Change by Design: how design thinking transforms organizations and inspires innovation, 2009." Collins Business, New York.

Cooper, Tim, ed. Longer lasting products: alternatives to the throwaway society. Gower Publishing, Ltd., 2012.

McDonough, William, and Michael Braungart. Cradle to cradle: Remaking the way we make things. MacMillan, 2010.

Leonard, Annie. The story of stuff: How our obsession with stuff is trashing the planet, our communities, and our health-and a vision for change. Simon and Schuster, 2010.

Slade, Giles. Made to break: Technology and obsolescence in America. Harvard University Press, 2009.

TZM Lecture Team. The Zeitgeist Movement Defined: Realizing a New Train of Thought The Zeitgeist Movement Global, 2014.