Design with "The End" in Mind

There is a growing movement surrounding the circular economy right now. The subject of blogs, conferences, new business school curriculum, books, morning talk shows (alright, that last one is a little hopeful, but the rest are highly prevalent in at least my own life).

Finally, people are starting to seriously consider where things go when we are done with them. And they are coming to the very real realization that the "away" from when we throw things away isn't as far away as we used to think. There are other options we must develop. We need to spread knowledge of these other options, work to improve the technologies, and - hardest of all - change our behavior.

Regardless of what these options are, there are steps that can be taken in our normal processes to make this change easier.

Designing with "the end" in mind, or design for disassembly (DfD) as some call it, is a design strategy that considers the future need to disassemble a product for repair, refurbish or recycle. Whatever the intended disposal, this new strategic method of design recognizes that the product at hand will one day have an end. As the average product's lifecycle has been decreasing dramatically over the past couple decades, it is amazing this hasn't been more widely practiced. The largest barrier is this idea of "cheap & easy". We as consumers used to buy products with the intent of keeping them a very long time, and when they finally did stop working for one reason or another, we intended to at least try and fix them. Now we want things so cheap, we have cut out the value of repairs. If this one breaks, it was so cheap anyway, just go buy another.


This attitude has left us with a constant "buy-buy-buy" consumer mentality, purchasing behavior to match, and landfills overflowing with underused, broken cheap stuff.

The time to about face is now. And the design phase is an incredible place to start. Questions to think about when you begin to create a new product with DfD in mind:

• Can the product be reused in a new way (upcycled)? Can it be recycled? Can it be downcycled?
• What parts will most likely need to be repaired? How can I make these parts easy to get to and replace?
• Who will repair it?
• How can the process be intuitive and simple?
• Can the end user simply disassemble the parts in need of different methods of disposal or reuse?

Approaching product design with DfD in mind can lead to savings and efficiencies through out the product life cycle. For example, when products are designed to disassemble easily they usually can be assembled easily as well. This saves a company time and money on labor costs. Also, future repairs can be easy to provide. And while a company may think this simply means for time, it will add value to the customer and where value is added, more value (money) can be captured, either in the original selling process or for future services provided. Also, with a design team being motivated to thing much more strategically and intricately about their designs, they often find inefficiencies they were overlooking before.



All in all, the time to act is now. And many are acting.

Check out:

Best Buy's Electronic Recovery Program: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Global-Promotions/Recycling-Electronics/pcmcat149900050025.c?id=pcmcat149900050025
Autodesk's Principles of Disassembly and Recycling: http://sustainabilityworkshop.autodesk.com/products/disassembly-and-recycling
HP's Design for Environment: http://www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-information/environment/design-for-environment.html#.VTUMQBPF9sA