Through my research, I have discovered that consumers have a different understanding then designers about their personal objects. Consumers tend to be unable to accurately define the life span of their objects (how long before they need to change their object or throw them way). This is due to the fact that consumers are lacking the required information’s to make the educated choice. T he reasoning behind this is that consumers know their objects will loose their interest, or a better alternative will soon be available. How can we maintain consumer value over the life span of an object? The question is how can we as designers educate the consumers about the life span of objects? Should we take inspiration from the food industry and add expiration date tags on objects?
When asked to a consumer how to increase the life span of certain objects the most recurrent answer was to improve the materials selection. This was surprising when often the material selection would be good to make the object last a multiple generations. Also the consumer would tend to give shorter life spans to the objects then design educated people. In conclusion why do we design objects to last for generations, when the consumer is unable to understand why objects have the life span they have ?
It is becoming obvious that designers are required to discover a manner to educate their consumers on the life span of objects.
A few considerations:
Adding an expiration date tag on objects to enable the consumer to realise how long the actual object as been designed to last.
For a monthly fee consumer could pay to help discarded objects regain a life. This would create an understanding with consumers that sometime their object could actually last a little longer with them.
Sharing ownership of objects, with a combination of service design. This would push companies to ensure that the objects are in condition, thus greater chance for them to last longer.
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