Emotionally Durable Design: Objects, Experiences and EmpathyIn today's unsustainable world of goods, where products are desired, purchased, briefly used and then promptly landfilled to make way for more, consumption and waste are rapidly spiralling out of control with truly devastating ecological consequences. Why do we, as a consumer society, have such short-lived and under-stimulating relationships with the objects that we invest such time, thought and money in acquiring, but that will soon be thoughtlessly discarded? Emotionally Durable Design is a call to arms for professionals, students and academic creatives; proposing the emergence of a new genre of sustainable design that reduces consumption and waste by increasing the durability of relationships established between users and products. In this provocative text, Jonathan Chapman pioneers a radical design about-face to reduce the impact of modern consumption without compromising commercial viability or creative edge. The author explores the essential question, why do users discard products that still work? It transports the reader beyond symptom-focused approaches to sustainable design such as design for recycling, biodegradeability and disassembly, to address the actual causes that underpin the environmental crisis we face. The result is a revealing exploration of consumer psychology and the deep motivations that fuel the human condition, and a rich resource of creative strategies and practical tools that will enable designers from a range of disciplines to explore new ways of thinking and of designing objects capable of supporting deeper and more meaningful relationships with their users.This is fresh thinking for a brave new world of creative, durable and sustainable products, buildings, spaces and designed experiences. |
Contents
Design for sustainability? | 5 |
The myth of individuality | 11 |
Chasing unattainable destinies | 17 |
Aboutface | 24 |
Statistics impose a paralysing vastness | 33 |
Attachments with objects | 57 |
Authors of experience | 83 |
Sustaining narrative | 111 |
Defictioning utopia | 137 |
Real world feasibility | 163 |
Endnotes | 187 |
197 | |
207 | |
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Emotionally Durable Design: "Objects, Experiences and Empathy" Jonathan Chapman Limited preview - 2012 |
Common terms and phrases
010 Publishers actually Aibo anthropocentric artefacts become behaviour Bloomsbury Publishing Plc brand complex consciousness consumerism consumers contemporary continually creating creative deeper defined deflowering degree deliver deployed Design and Emotion desire developed digital pet domestic robotics ecological ecological crisis economic efficiency emotional attachments Emotionally Durable empathy enabling environmental evolution evolve existence experience design experiential feed-forward fiction fictional find first fleeting flow frame tale function future genres human Ibid individual industrial design influence intensity interaction jolt Katherine Anne Rose landfill layers legislation Levi Strauss manufactured material culture material engagement meaning meaningful motivated narrative experiences nature notion nurturing objects and experiences one’s perceived Personal Digital Assistants physical planet possess potential reality recycling reflections relationship robots scenarios semantic sense signified simply social society specific subject and object subject–object sustainable design Tamagotchi technological things today’s user experiences user’s utopias values waste