This project explores the emotional connections between owners and products with the goal of designing emotionally durable products. When someone is attached to a product, they tend to take better care of it and are less inclined to replace it prematurely. It’s intriguing to focus on sustainability from a human-centered perspective. Often, as designers, we tend to emphasize technical aspects when designing sustainable products, such as reducing materials and lowering energy consumption. However, this technical approach only considers the product’s lifespan itself and overlooks the possibility that users might dispose of it before it’s worn out. According to Lassen (2021) extending the lifespan of a product has a greater environmental impact than any other measure. Therefore, understanding what encourages attachment to certain products is crucial for making sustainable design choices.
This project serves as inspiration for both myself and fellow designers, providing tangible examples of how sustainability can be achieved through emotional durable design. My goal is to pinpoint the key drivers behind long lasting relationships between owners and objects. With these identified drivers, I plan to design a table lamp tailored to each relevant driver. It’s important to note that I won’t be able to cover every driver, but I’m focusing on the most significant and relevant ones. For instance, a handmade product crafted by a loved one holds a unique significance that mass-produced products can’t replicate. Through this project, I aim to capture the essence of the bond between a person and their cherished products and showcase this through tangible industrialized products. The collection will consist of a variety of table lamps, each designed to showcase a different key driver. This will allow people to evaluate how a specific drivers impacts their emotions towards a product, ultimately empowering them to make more informed choices when it comes to sustainability.
Building a framework
Research revealed there seemed to be a gap, there exists no visual framework that illustrating the connection between product qualities and emotional durable design. There are however many theories but they vary in terminology in addition there is no single theory that covers all discovered product qualities. Given the absence of a framework for this thesis on emotionally durable design, a new experimental framework will be illustrated in this thesis, a framework that combines the existing theories.
Tangible examples
The aim of this project is to create tangible examples of each of the emotional durable design strategies. The purpose of providing these tangible examples is to make the intangible subject of ‘emotional durability’ more tangible for product designers who should implement this in their career.
Regarding the time frame for designing these 9 objects there is 5 week. The tangible examples will be ambient lamps for tables, windowsills and shelves.
Project limitations
Light source: 12W E14 100lm
Switch: N/a
New technologies: N/a
Model finish: 9 low fidelity models
Type lamp: Table lamp
Specifications: should fit on a shelf of 26 x 110 cm
User: People that are settling or have settled
How to use it: As an ambient light source
Where to use it: Private home, in the living room in a window sill, shelf of table.
Lamp 2: Enjoyment
Enjoyment: Product attachment from enjoyment can be achieved by 'providing novel, interesting, exciting or even fascinating functionality, content, presentation or interactions that raise the attention of the user' (Hassenzahl, 2003). ‘A captivating narrative must play on our deepest desires, dreams and fears in order to hold us in its grasp, enchanted and helpless. knowledge and understanding are agents of destruction. Durable narratives must therefore attempt to sidestep the deflowering gaze of the consumer, maintaining enchantment while never actually being fully understood.’ (chapman).
During the sketching process the designer tried to implement different functions into the lamp. But since the lamp needed to stay simple in order to make 9 in a short time frame that would mean that the lamp could have extra functions but this needs to be done in a simple way. The chosen lamp for this prompt has a big oval shaped shade and a relatively tiny base. The lamp looks out of balance, as if the head is too big for its body. This was done in the hope of intriguing the user, it raises questions which then also raises interest. In addition to this the shape of the lamp also changes dramatically from all angles which stimulates the user visually. The lamp can also be changed into another position going from a lying oval shape to a standing oval shape which makes the lamp feel like it has an entirely new character this is also done to stimulate the user visually, this keeps the lamp looking interestingly over time so the user doesn’t get bored. But mostly the designer tried to over exemplify the functionality part of the prompt by making a huge shade and a tiny base.
How it is made: The lamp is made by 3D printing, and the base is made out of a sheet of steel and a rod, steel because the base needed to be heavy in order to create a stable lamp. The ‘glass’ is made by vacuum molding acrylic over an 3d printed mold and after sandblasting it.
Lamp 3: Detachment
Detachment: A rather unique category of emotional durability is to 'feel no emotional connection to the product, have low expectations and thus perceive it in a favorable way due to a lack of emotional demand or expectation'. (house of nerds) 'this also suggests that attachment may actually be counterproductive as it elevates the level of expectation within the user to a point that is often unattainable' (chapman)
For the detachment prompt the designer thought it is important to keep the lamp really simple and for it to nearly ask nothing from its environment, something that fits in almost anywhere, it doesn’t ask the user to make an difficult interior decision. A lamp that is there and the only thing it does is fulfill its purpose of creating ambient light but nothing more. If you would take the lamp away probably no one would even notice. The sketches was a matter of listing basic shapes and seeing which ones look modern and simple but not visually stimulating. A cylinder turned out to be the least interesting after drawing all the basic shapes.
How it is made: The lamp is made by buying an existing vase that has somewhat the right dimensions an properties I was looking for and printing a base that fits underneath.
