Finally, An Infographic We Can Endorse: Design for Product Lifetime
Sometimes we feel like a broken record, calling for repairable design. That’s why we created our Self-Repair Manifesto. Electronics should be made with modular parts. Screws, not glues. Quality, durable materials. Service documentation should be clear and freely available.
So we were thrilled to see this new “Design for Product Lifetime” infographic, from Makeshift Magazine and Autodesk. It makes some hard-hitting, unequivocal points about how the expansion of the electronics industry is unsustainable—and proposes repairable design as a solution. (Full disclaimer: it does mention our repair guides, so endorsing it makes me feel a bit like a professor who assigns her own book.)
Infographics can be tough to get right, especially when it comes to the consequences of over-consumption. As we’ve argued before, e-waste infographics tend to gloss over complexity, and waste streams are notoriously messy and complicated. We don’t have solid data about how much e-waste is produced and exported, let alone what happens to it after it’s exported. The EPA’s most recent data is from 2009, and that’s a long time ago, especially given the very rapid rate of change in the electronics world.
Most of what we know about the informal repair industry in developing countries comes from ethnographic, qualitative case studies and documentaries like Fixers—the kind of research that doesn’t translate particularly well into the cut-and-dry, numbers-based, diagrammatic form of an infographic. That’s why we get excited by large-scale projects that might give us some more reliable numbers, such as the US International Trade Commission’s upcoming study on e-waste and InnoCentive and Popular Science’s e-waste tracking challenge.
But the basics of good, repairable design aren’t nearly as messy. And we don’t have to wait for solid e-waste data to make repairable design standard. So cheers to Makeshift and Autodesk for making the first infographic we’re proud to endorse.
Comments
Funny that.. coming from AutoDesk. Seems like an inconsistent message given their product support.
You have to admit though, that infographic looks good :P
Given the popularity of Kickstarter and other crowdfunding sites, I wonder if any consumer electronics are being made using the philosophies found here and in the repair manifesto?
The Ouya Android game console on Kickstarter is the first one that comes to mind. Any others?
As a fifth grade computer teacher, I will be using this as part of my “parts of a computer” unit. It’s great, thanks. Keep evangelizing; perhaps we can inspire newer generations if not his one…
But why would electronics manufacturers get behind this? They want your stuff to break and be difficult to fix so you will buy more.
For years I built our desktop PCs and reused what I could for each new build. The off-the-shelf equipment has gotten so inexpensive that grow-your-own is too expensive but off-the-shelf can still be repaired/upgraded to a degree. Now I upgrade/repair our laptops (as much as possible) since that is almost exclusively what we have. It would be a whole lot easier if manufacturers made their products more service friendly. We buy our machines based on that simple criteria, how easily I can repair them when they go plunk.
I’m lucky if my laptops last 6 months seems the screens are always the first thing to fail.
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