Improving sustainability by increasing an object’s value over time
Key takeaways from Yoshiyuki Matsuoka’s book ‘Design Science for Product Creation x Product Usage’.
We often think about sustainability by the way of recycling, reuse, and renewable materials in from a process perspective. Yoshiyuki offers another way - by designing for how we can improve a product’s lifespan by designing for longer-term usage. It focuses on reducing the waste by improving the value and desirability with time. He calls this “value growth design” (p.29).
We all know things we’ve bought that we treasure more over time, even if it’s decaying. This is the type of value we can design into our products to combat the throwaway society. We can do this by considering the temporal aspect of product design - how does product function change over time, based on circumstances, life, and needs? Yoshiyuki calls this “timeaxis design” (p.55).
3 ways to increase product value over time:
Design for personalisation, personality, or attachment through repeated usage and care.
For example, a baseball glove that takes on a personal fit, Hagi pottery that naturally changes colour and personality with time due to the properties of the clay, or a piano that you become more attached to every time you clean and tune it.
Design products that learn preferences and get more customised with usage.
For example, AI that becomes more efficient as it learns your patterns, your smartphone that you’ve customised settings for, or certain materials that memorise your shape.
Design a new circumstance, that then creates a new relationship with the product.
For example, designing a local annual kite flying competition can prompt a sense of camaraderie with an inanimate object, and in this, and a sustained relationship that grows memories.
My imperfect but meaningful Hagiyaki made with sensei Koto Komei.
Image by @moonboyz
Main principle on how this works:
Humans have the ability to find meaning - we should design for them to find it.
Why this particularly works in Japan, and how we can leverage it:
People have a tendency to take care of items. Religious or not, they believe from Shintoism that everything has a spirit in it, so you should treat it with care. One Japanese teacher told us that’s why we push the chair in with two hands, receive items with two hands, and put down paper gently.
In the West, we can design for the awareness of care.
Final thoughts
There’s many ways to think about sustainability. Designing for a new relationship with objects is one such carbon-zero way.