Value Futures, how to cultivate product value over time

We are product consuming junkies choking our planet with products. With Value Futures Industrial Design master students investigated how to push the lifespan of products, challenging our addiction for the ‘new’ and bending economic models. The first results of the scenarios being developed that investigate and cultivate product value over time will be presented. What more scenarios and strategies can be developed? Is there a cure for our addiction for the new? How can designers influence the value of (existing) products over time?

Despite many attempts to diminish the effects of human activity on the living surface of the Earth, energy and material consumption are still on the increase. The emphasis up until now is mainly on reducing the effects: diminish CO2 emission by shifting to cleaner conversion processes and reducing the amount of waste through recycling, which entails use of energy. Very little happens when it comes to reducing the amount of energy and materials that we consume. There are ways to achieve this and to replace current production and consumption habits with less material-oriented ones. For that we need to explore alternative perspectives.

Design and traditional business models have a limited scope. In general, the focus is on selling more and faster with little concern for polluting side effects and later reuse and recycle the leftovers as far as they don’t end up on landfills. This cornucopian approach is mainly technical and naively functional. Looking at products as potential raw material for the next batch disregards the value they could keep on representing. There is little concern for what happens after the introduction of a product, whereas that is where their life really starts to matter, and where (economic) opportunities already occur.

When products start their career of use their value is likely to change. It may degrade materially and one can react with cleaning it, mending it, restoring it or upgrading it. However, in general, a product is not merely a facilitator of use. It has a considerable immaterial component. Value emerges from mental and sociological processes, that nevertheless, are negotiable. It may go up or down with circumstances and it can be influenced according to a planned (but not fixed) scenario.

Students of the Master Industrial Design will present the first results of the scenarios being developed together with Ed van Hinte, to investigate and cultivate product value over time. Followed by a discussion on Value Futures with Ed van Hinte (design critic), Wilco van Dijk (Professor Psychological Determinants of Economic Decision Making, Leiden University), Merel kamp (philosopher and designer), Marcel den Hollander (researcher Delft University of Technology, Alice Twemlow (Lector Design KABK) and Annemartine van Kesteren (curator Boijmans van Beuningen).

Speakers:

Ed van Hinte is an industrial designer with an aversion for objects but foremost design critic. Within his Design Research Station researches product value construction in time, challenging the ‘circular economy’ with its mainly technical and naively functional approach.”Functionality is just a minor aspect of products. Most of the time products are just standing there 'sending meaning'". He was the co-autor of Eternally Yours, Time in Design.

Wilco van Dijk is Professor Psychological Determinants of Economic Decision Making at Leiden University. In his research he focuses on the emotional component in decision making: "We are not Homo economicus, but Homo sapiens, so we make decisions based not only on rational considerations, but also on our emotions".

Marcel den Hollander just finished his PhD Research project at Delft University of Technology focussing on models that reduce pollution and the footprint of products. He was co-researcher in the project/book: Products that last. Products that Last changes the way designers and entrepreneurs develop and exploit goods, helping reduce material and energy consumption over time. Nothing more, nothing less.

Merel Kamp is philosopher, writer and designer and combines these disciplines in her work. At the Master Industrial Design at the Royal Academy of Art she is the philosophical an theoretical conscience of the department. Her observations, reflections and critiques can be read in Trouw, NRC-Next, De Groene Amsterdammer, Hard//Hoofd, DUDE en Wijsgerig Perspectief.

Alice Twemlow is design critic, curator and educator, is particularly interested in design’s complex interrelations with time and the environment. Her current research focuses on the material manifestations and the meanings of design when it is disposed of and becomes trash. She is recently appointed Lector Design at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (KABK)

Annemartine van Kesteren is a curator, design consultant and writer based in Rotterdam. She is part of the curatorial staff of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen where she is responsible for the collection of contemporary design and the program 'Design in Boijmans’: a program that actualizes the focus on design. She curated 'Design columns' and the recent exhibition 'Change the system'.

Programme