Designing Things

to Last
From the Model-T to the iPhone 3:
How Design Drives the Evolving
Technology Cycle of Want and Need
by Rich McEachran
Today many people throw things away, not because they are unusable, but because we want to
replace them with the latest style. It keeps the wheels of industry turning and designers in
business, but also bloats our landfills and destroys the environment. What are the alternatives,
and can we learn to embrace them?

If you ask jan nielsen, his family’s Mercedes-Benz W123 saloon should have been built to last.
Manufactured in the mid-1970s, it was very much a grand showpiece, and wherever they went
in it, they would arrive in style. It was also a robust machine, like a block of granite… until it had
a fault that proved difficult to repair. ‘We started having problems with the water pump and
this led to a coolant leak. But when it came to fixing it, the local service centre didn’t have the
part needed in stock and told us they didn’t expect to carry it ever again,’ Nielsen recalls. ‘It
turns out that supplies of old parts start to dry up a few years after a manufacturer stops
production of a model. We could have ordered the part needed from a secondhand dealer and
got it shiped, but there was no guarantee that the part received was going to be in good
working condition. And the service centre couldn’t say for sure whether they’d have the right
equipment to fit it anyway.’
In the end, and to save money and hassle, Nielsen decided they should cut their losses and sell
it on. It’s a dilema many drivers have faced over the years because, quite simply, cars aren’t
designed to last. From a manufacturing point of view, this approach makes business sense,
because if there was a never-ending supply of parts and every vehicle could be fixed easily,
then every car would be a lifelong investment, which wouldn’t be economically viable for
carmakers, so planned obsolescence is a part of their design.
The New Model
of Obsolescence
Planned obsolescence is defined as a business strategy in which old models and parts are
discontinued and new models and parts are introduced, perhaps with incremental changes,
making the older ones look outdated and ensuring constant demand. The term was first used in
1932 by a real estate broker, Bernard London, who wanted to encourage spending to bring the
USA out of the Great Depression. He noted in his famed essay ‘Ending the Depression Through
Planned Obsolescence’ that prior to the collapse of the economy, people were giving up their
vehicles ‘before they were worn out’, whereas times of scarcity saw them ‘disobeying the law
of obsolescence, […] using their old cars and their old clothing much longer than statisticians
had expected based on earlier experience’.
Planned obsolescence as we know it today, though not precisely as London imagined it, had
already been intraduced on a large scale in the automotive industry during the Roaring
Twenties, a time when the Ford Model T was the car that had the world motoring. It was sturdy
and reliable, and started rolling off the Detroit factory’s production line in 1908, with 15 million
of them going on to be produced over the next 19 years. Though it originally came in a number
of colours including green, maroon, bright red and dark blue, Henry Ford, upon relising the
huge demand for the car, famously decided that it should come in ‘any colour, as long as it’s
black’, because black paint dried quickly and production speed was of the essence. For more
than a decade, the Model T came in just one colour, and by the late 1920s, General Motors
(GM) had started to capitalise on Ford’s inertia by releasing models on an annual basis, creating
a perception that each new one was better than the previous one. Eventully, as the market
became saturated, the Model T ran out of gas.
In his 1963 autobiography, My Years with General Motors former CEO Alfred P. Sloan said that
‘The changes in the new model should be so novel and attractive as to create demand for the
new value and, so to speak, create a certain amount of dissatisfaction with past models as
compared with the new one.’Although this strategy had been implemented in the twenties and
named in the thirties, it wasn’t until 1954 that the term ‘planned obsolescence’ was actually
popularized by an American industrial designer, Brooks Stevens. He defined it as ‘instilling in the
buyer the desire to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is
necessary’.
Around the same time, credit cards in their earliest form were becoming a popular way for
people to spend money that wasn’t at their disposal. Even poorer people were now able to buy
products they previously considered unattainable: home appliances, cookers, radios and colour
televisions, once a luxury purchase only the well-off could afford, but now becoming
increasingly commonplace. This newfound buying power meant that manufacturers could
increase production and could even release new and updated models, encouraging customers
to buy what they didn’t need, even if it meant borrowing more credit, artificially boosting the
economy and mantaining employment.
The history of the Phoebus Cartel has cast something of a shadow over the lighting industry.
Even the humble incandescent light bulb was the subject of a great planned obsolescence
conspiracy during the 1920s and 1930s when a group of international businessmen known as
the Phoebus Cartel colluded to engineer bulbs with dramatically shortened life spans. Bulbs
that had once burned for 1,500 to 2,500 hours now lasted for only half that, which meant
increased sales, and because of reliable demand, since lightbulbs were a necessity rather than a
luxury purchase, companies could also artificially inflate prices.
Today, incandescent light bulbs remain virtually unchanged from their late-1800s form, though
they have often been criticised. In 2009, the EU began phasing them out in favour of energy-
efficient ones, and other regions have taken similar measures. From the end of 2018, halogen
lamps, which, like incandescent bulbs, use a tungsten filament, will also cease to be sold,
forcing consumers to make the switch to other technologies like LEDs. These more expensive
bulbs are marketed as being up to ten times as efficient, but as a 2010 documentary, The Great
Light Bulb Conspiracy, points out, whether they last a fantastically long time remains an
unanswered question. Doubts also linger over whether they are the most sustainable solution,
but at the moment they are the best mass-produced alternative on the market.
Another option that is being explored is not a product but a model: selling light as a service.
Pay-per-lux, as it’s known, is being pioneered by Frans van Houten, CEO of Dutch company
Royal Philips, and circular economy visionary and architect Thomas Rau. It’s based on the
principle that people should only pay for what they consume, so rather than owning any
lighting products, they simply pay a fee to a third party to handle the installation, maintenance
and upgrades. While a number of businesses have signed up for the service, it’s hoped that in
time it could be offered to households and eventually transform the whole market.
Ethics vs. Economics For households to turn their backs on such familiar products will require a
shift in mindset. ‘Consumers are conditioned to buy them, and retailers and the like are
conditioned to sell them,’ says Tom Lawton, inventor of the Million Mile Light, a safety light for
joggers and dog walkers that harnesses energy from footfall to power small LEDs and is
designed to last forever. Lawton hasn’t had the easiest of times getting the niche product into
the hands of people, partly because retailers are wary of stocking it, which means that sales
have to be driven through their online profile. ‘We’ve had positive feedback from potential
buyers about the design, the price point and our branding. But not a single retailer has teken
the product on. Why? A few running store managers told us in confidence and admitted it’s
more profitable to sell cheaper throwaway lights that customers don’t particularly care for. If
they lose it or throw it away when the batteries run out, they’ll simply buy another one.’
In an ideal world, Lawton says, companies and manufacturers would do business on the
principle of people buying fewer but superior products which would be required to have a
certain level of durability and repairability. Products would cost more, but because they would
last far longer than existing ones, they would be seen as a worthwhile investment. ‘However,
the narrative of planned obsolescence goes much deeper than engineering products like
running lights that never give up,’ he adds. ‘This story is about the bigger picture of what
underpins our throwaway culture and, for me at least, the problem is the pursuit of short-term
profit rather than longer-term objectives.’ To reach the point where products are being
manufactured to be more durable and reliable would require designers to think about life
cycles and endings. Right now, designers excel at on-boarding consumers and persuading them
to commit to a particular product or service through advertising and branding, yet bad at off-
boarding them, says Joe Macleod, author of Ends. (Why We Overlook Endings for Humans,
Products, Services and Digital. And Why We Shouldn’t)who has worked in mobile phone design
since the late 1990s, including a stint at Nokia. This failure to off-board means that endings
aren’t part of the consumer experience and so ‘we buy things on a whim, impulsively, to satisfy
an emotional desire’, without thinking about the impact consumptions are having once a
product reaches the end of its life. As a result of ‘wanting to experience new purchases, we fail
to reflect on the long-term consequences and so products continue to be designed with
shortened life spans’.
The Fate of Design
By failing to acknowledge the importance of endings, designers and manufacturers lose the
ability to improve them. ‘Approaches like cradle-to-cradle and the circular economy have aimed
to create products and services that are less damaging, but often miss a chance to hone in on
the consumer experience,’ Macleod says. ‘They’re aimed instead at neutralising the damage of
materials and the breakdown that the chemistry of these physical systems has on the
environment.’
If consumers became aware of the impact that their purchasing habits have, both on the
environment and on companies’ design strategies, they could respond by turning around and
demanding action. Sales of inferior products would drop, and manufacturers would have to re-
evaluate their products, designing out factors that shorten life spans, and designing in more
robust elements that last longer or are easier to repair.
Consumers see warranty stickers and warnings and fear what will happen once they’ve prised
the back off their devices, but this is more out of ignorance of electronics, because with a bit of
creativity and tinkering, ‘obsolete’ products can be restored. ‘We need to open up our devices
and learn exactly what needs to change; only then will we have the knowledge to demand
action from manufacturers,’ Gunter says. ‘We know that there are consumers who have a
deeper desire for durable, reliable and long-lasting products, but the challenge is how to raise
awareness and get the message out there so others can learn,’ Lawton says. ‘Planned
obsolescence is just lazy thinking. We should be designing with planned endurance in mind.’

Rich McEachran is a London-based freelance writer exploring the intersection of technology,

innovation and sustainability. With the cities of tomorrow facing many challenges, he’s
particularly interested in highlighting smart solutions to our waste problem and unsustainable
consumer habits.