Design to

Reduce the
Need to
Consume
Rayed Barkat
Design to Reduce the Need to Consume
This strategy is about making stuff that lasts, stuff that we really
want and want to keep and look after, and the design and
production of textiles and products which adapt and change with
age. This strategy is also about exploring alternative forms of
design and consumption such as co-design and collaborative
consumption.
Design to Reduce the Need to Consume
• Emotionally durable design
• Slow design
• Consumer participation in co-design and collaborative
consumption, crowd sourcing and social networks
• Apps for bespoke information
• Multi-functional clothing
Emotionally durable design
Have you ever cherished a garment so much for any reason, that you
couldn’t let it go? Maybe it stayed ‘perfect’ for unusually long (because
you took extra good care of it?), or maybe it just seemed better and
better until you had worn it to a complete rag and you had to let it
pass? Hopefully you have. To the most conscious consumers, this
ought to be the rule rather than the exception, right. But take a minute
to think about it…

What are the qualities or circumstances that make you more attached
to certain items? It probably isn’t a simple answer. But it’s worth
exploring. And the million-dollar question is of course: how can you
use these insights when creating your own designs?
Emotionally durable design
The percieved value of most products peaks the moment that we buy
them. As soon as the product leaves the store and is unwrapped, value
starts a steep decline. The first little scratch, the first wear, the first
wash makes the product seem less 'perfect' and too soon we start to
desire a shiny new product again. If we are to create sustainable
fashion we must design products that celebrate the process of ageing,
and the accumulation of grime and wear and tear.
Emotionally durable design
As an approach to sustainable design, "emotionally durable
design reduces the consumption and waste of natural resources
by increasing the resilience of relationships established between
consumers and products.“
Emotionally durable design
According to this theory, the crisis of unsustainability is a crisis of
behaviour and not one of materials and energy alone.
Emotionally durable design looks beyond approaches to
sustainable design such as design for disassembly, design for
recycling or the specification of low impact materials for example.
Instead, it looks to the behavioural drivers of our short-term and
unsatisfactory engagements with the material world, and
develops strategies to enable longer lasting products that will be
cherished and kept for longer. In this way, “emotionally durable
design reframes the environmental paradigm, increasing
resource productivity and reducing waste by elongating the
lifespan of products.
Emotionally durable design
In the emotionally durable design context, product durability is as
much about desire, love, fascination and attachment as it is
fractured polymers, cracked screens or blown circuitry; it is "the
idea that an item will last because of its emotional connection
with the user, rather than because of its physical durability".[15] It
presents strategic counterpoints to our throwaway society, by
developing design tools, methods and frameworks that enhance
the resilience of relationships established between people and
things; supporting not the design of durable ‘products’ per se, but
the design of durable meanings, and values, that products
deliver.
Emotionally durable design – Consumer
Motivation for Consumption
Consumption is natural
Ask a developed world human to stop consuming and you might as well ask a vampire not
to suck blood. Although the urge can be temporarily suppressed to varying degrees of
success, over-compensatory surges inevitably follow, providing an aftermath of even
greater intensity; consumption is not just a way of life, it is life. It provides an invaluable
vehicle for processing and interacting with an evolving world, facilitating both learning and
social interaction through the continual intake of new, fresh experiences. As natural as
drawing breath, the urge to consume is merely symptomatic of a stimulus-hungry species
dwelling in a homogenized and over-streamlined world where the prevailing mode of
existence comes with the majority of problems already solved. This reduces the once life-
threatening natural world down to a whimsical pastime now experienced in 30-minute bytes
through televised portals such as The Discovery Channel, Wildlife on One and Animal
Planet.
Emotionally durable design – Consumer
Motivation for Consumption
The material you possess is the destiny you
Like an itch that can never be scratched, the covetous
search for the ultimate expression of self as mediated
through manufactured objects appears to be endless:
The people I know who used to sit in the bathroom with
pornography, now they sit in the bathroom with their IKEA furniture
catalogue… You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I
will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple of years
you’re satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you’ve got
your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the
perfect bed. The drapes. The rug.
Emotionally durable design – Consumer
Motivation for Consumption
When aren’t we consuming?
Material consumption operates on a variety of experiential
layers, from the rational and the tangible to the profound and
the numinous. Consumers mine these layers, unearthing
meaningful content as they steadily excavate deeper into the
semiotic core of an object. If any one of these layers should fail
to stimulate, the relationship between user and object
immediately falls under threat. In marketing circles this is
referred to as extinction or, more descriptively, as the
disappearance of a response due to lack of reinforcement.
Emotionally durable design – Consumer
Motivation for Consumption
This is a hazardous stage in the subject–object relationship:
hitting rock bottom is frequently the precursor to product
replacement. At present, most objects are designed without this
understanding, leading to a wasteful culture built on the fragile
foundation of anonymous interactions with fairly meaningless
objects. In contrast, it may be said that consumers will continue
to mine the experiential layers of an object just as long as there
are further layers to be mined. It is therefore imperative that
designers endeavour to weave greater degrees of intricacy
amongst the layers of products to ensure the sustainability of
their meaning.
Emotionally durable design – Consumer
Motivation for Consumption
Need
Gandhi once said that ‘Earth provides enough to satisfy every
man’s need, but not every man’s greed’.12 Yet, human need is
also insatiable and may quite possibly be situated beyond the
reach of complete and total satisfaction. This is because new
needs emerge the moment old needs are met, thus nurturing
the infinite sequence of desire and destruction so characteristic
of the modern world. This continual raising of the bar has
brought our society to where it is today both in terms of social
and technological evolution.
Emotionally durable design – Consumer
Motivation for Consumption
Need could be described as the very core from which the majority of human
motivations are born; continually at work, needs exist as potent
psychological features that chastise us into action the moment a lack is
experienced.
Bocock claims that consumer motivation – or the awakening of human need
– is catalysed by a sense of imbalance or lack that steadily cultivates a
restless state of being. This restlessness is interpreted by consumers as
discontentment, and frequently motivates goal-oriented behaviours such as
shopping, discarding or other modifications to the material fabric of one’s
life. Needs are therefore motivated when a realtime imbalance is
experienced between an actual and a desired mode of existence.
Emotionally durable design – Consumer
Motivation for Consumption

Material artefacts are indicative of an individual’s aspirations, and serve to outline

their desired life direction
Emotionally durable design – Consumer
Motivation for Consumption
Meaning
The notion of meaning is perhaps the most complex of all: it is influenced
by the consumer’s previous experiences, while also being highly context
specific. For example, the meaning of a rat in a pet shop differs greatly
to that of the same rat in a restaurant kitchen. In this respect it is easy to
envisage how product meaning can be loosely directed by designers but
never fully controlled:
Emotionally durable design – Consumer
Motivation for Consumption
Object meaning incorporates three essential characteristics:
1. polysemy;
2. contextual sensitivity; and
3. consensus.
Emotionally durable design – Consumer
Motivation for Consumption
Polysemy refers to the fact that a given object can mean many things –
baking soda, for example, can be a refrigerator deodorizer, a dentifrice or an
antacid.
Contextual sensitivity suggests that the meaning of a Punjabi on a Eid Day
probably differs from that of a Punjabi worn during a funeral.
And consensus refers to the fact that, even though each person holds
idiosyncratic information about an object, some minimal amount of object
information (meaning) must be shared by people in order for them to
communicate about the object
Emotionally durable design – Consumer
Motivation for Consumption
Having and being
We find the same connection between incorporation and possession in
many forms of cannibalism. For example, by eating another human being, I
acquire that person’s power (thus, cannibalism can be the magic equivalent
of acquiring slaves); by eating the heart of a brave man, I acquire his
courage; by eating a totem animal, I acquire the divine substance the totem
animal symbolizes
Emotionally durable design – Consumer
Motivation for Consumption
It is obstructive to perceive consumption as an isolated event or,
perhaps, a split second happening that occurs when products are
purchased: consumption is an unfolding process through which the
external meanings and values as signified by objects are internalized by
the consumer through engagement and subsequent familiarity.
Sociologist Pasi Falk claims that consumption is a ‘transformative and
transcendent process of the appropriation and conversion of
meaning’.21 It is this process of appropriation and conversion that we
as designers need to address, as it is through this process that strong
connections between people and things are forged.
Emotionally durable design – Consumer
Motivation for Consumption
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
Twentieth-century American psychologist and philosopher Abraham
Maslow categorizes all human need – regardless of moral judgement
– within a simple pyramidal structure consisting of five hierarchical
levels. Known as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, his theoretical model
provides a comprehensive road map to human motivation. Maslow
defines five levels of human need. These consist of physiological
needs, such as water, food and breathable oxygen; safety and
security needs, such as shelter, stability and a safe place in which to
live; social needs, which may include companionship, tenderness and,
perhaps, a sense of belonging; ego needs, which regularly include the
need for prestige, status and positive self-esteem; and self
actualization needs, such as the successful accomplishment of
personal goals.
Emotionally durable design – Consumer
Motivation for Consumption
Emotionally durable design – Enduring
meaning and value
As a strategic approach, "emotionally durable design provides a useful
language to describe the contemporary relevance of designing
responsible, well made, tactile products which the user can get to know
and assign value to in the long-term." According to Hazel Clark and
David Brody of Parsons The New School for Design in New York,
“emotionally durable design is a call for professionals and students alike
to prioritise the relationships between design and its users, as a way of
developing more sustainable attitudes to, and in, design things.”
Emotionally durable design – Enduring
meaning and value
In the emotionally durable design context, product durability is as
much about desire, love, fascination and attachment as it is fractured
polymers, cracked screens or blown circuitry; it is "the idea that an item
will last because of its emotional connection with the user, rather than
because of its physical durability". It presents strategic counterpoints to
our throwaway society, by developing design tools, methods and
frameworks that enhance the resilience of relationships established
between people and things; supporting not the design of durable
‘products’ per se, but the design of durable meanings, and values, that
products deliver.
Emotionally durable design – Enduring
meaning and value
To understand why we have become so profligate in our consumption,
"we should look to the underlying motivations of consumers; following
the notion of emotionally durable design, there is likely to be a move
away from mass-production and towards tailor-made articles and
products designed and manufactured with greater craftsmanship". Dr
Kate Fletcher of London College of Fashion describes how, “emotionally
durable design explains appropriateness as a function of a product's
emotional presence, evolution and growth; it is not enough for a
product to provoke an emotional response within the user on one
occasion; it must do this repeatedly. In effect, a relationship with an
object must be developed over an extended period of time.”
Emotionally durable design – 6-point
framework for emotionally durable design
Dr. Jonathan Chapman explained that "the 'design for durability'
paradigm has important implications beyond its conventional
interpretation, in which product longevity is considered solely in terms
of an object’s physical endurance—whether cherished or discarded".
There is little point designing physical durability into products, if people
lack the desire to keep them.
he provided the following 6-point experiential framework (and
supporting annotations), as follows:
Emotionally durable design – 6-point
framework for emotionally durable design
Design for Narrative: users share a unique personal history with the product;
this often relates to when, how and from whom the object was acquired

Design for Detachment: users feel no emotional connection to the product,

have low expectations and thus perceive it in a favorable way due to a lack of
emotional demand or expectation (this also suggests that attachment may
actually be counterproductive, as it elevates the level of expectation within
the user to a point that is often unattainable)

Design for Surface: the product is physically ageing well, and developing a
tangible character through time, use and sometimes misuse
Emotionally durable design – 6-point
framework for emotionally durable design
Design for Attachment: users feel a strong emotional connection to the
product, due to the service it provides, the information it contains and
the meaning it conveys
Design for Fiction: users are delighted or even enchanted by the
product as it is not yet fully understood or know by the user; these are
often recently purchased products that are still being explored and
discovered by the user
Design for Consciousness: the product is perceived as autonomous and
in possession of its own free will; it is quirky, often temperamental and
interaction is an acquired skill that can be fully acquired only with
practice
Participatory Design or Co- Design
Participatory design (originally co-operative design, now often co-design) is an
approach to design attempting to actively involve all stakeholders (e.g. employees,
partners, customers, citizens, end users) in the design process to help ensure the
result meets their needs and is usable. Participatory design is an approach which is
focused on processes and procedures of design and is not a design style. The term
is used in a variety of fields e.g. software design, urban design, architecture,
landscape architecture, product design, sustainability, graphic design, planning, and
even medicine as a way of creating environments that are more responsive and
appropriate to their inhabitants' and users' cultural, emotional, spiritual and
practical needs. It is one approach to placemaking.

Recent research suggests that designers create more innovative concepts and ideas
when working within a co-design environment with others than they do when
creating ideas on their own.
Participatory Design or Co- Design
In participatory design, participants (putative, potential or future) are
invited to cooperate with designers, researchers and developers during
an innovation process. Potentially, they participate during several
stages of an innovation process: they participate during the initial
exploration and problem definition both to help define the problem
and to focus ideas for solution, and during development, they help
evaluate proposed solutions. Maarten Pieters and Stefanie Jansen
describe co-design as part of a complete co-creation process, which
refers to the "transparent process of value creation in ongoing,
productive collaboration with, and supported by all relevant parties,
with end-users playing a central role" and covers all stages of a
development process.
Participatory Design or Co- Design
Co-design is often used by trained designers who recognize the
difficulty in properly understanding the cultural, societal, or usage
scenarios encountered by their user. C. K. Prahalad and Venkat
Ramaswamy are usually given credit for bringing co-creation/co-design
to the minds of those in the business community with the 2004
publication of their book, The Future of Competition: Co-Creating
Unique Value with Customers. They propose:
"The meaning of value and the process of value creation are rapidly
shifting from a product and firm-centric view to personalized consumer
experiences. Informed, networked, empowered and active consumers
are increasingly co-creating value with the firm."
Participatory Design or Co- Design
The phrase co-design is also used in reference to the simultaneous
development of interrelated software and hardware systems. The term
co-design has become popular in mobile phone development, where
the two perspectives of hardware and software design are brought into
a co-design process.
Results directly related to integrating co-design into existing
frameworks is "researchers and practitioners have seen that co-
creation practiced at the early front end of the design development
process can have an impact with positive, long-range consequences."
Participatory Design or Co- Design
Participatory Design or Co- Design