How Will Changes in Attitudes Towards Consumerism Impact Design?

Hi friends,

This week I was invited by Hector Silva, founder of Advanced Design and Offsite, to lead a graduate ID seminar at RIT on the topic of consumerism in design. Consumerism is inherently tied to the profession of industrial design. It is the engine that has raised the global standard of living and fueled the development of products in the last century. It also clearly has some negative impacts on our psychology and our environment. The seminar was a challenging and thought-provoking discussion, and here are a three highlights from what we discussed and some things I’ve been thinking about in the days since.

Consumerism has direct and significant environmental costs

While it is true that the ability to influence climate impact is far greater at the levels of governments and corporations, our consumer culture is what drives demand for fossil fuels based products and we as consumers do have some culpability.

A 2017 study by the Carbon Disclosure Project found that 70 percent of the world’s greenhouse has emissions can be traced back to just 100 companies. Of those emissions, only 10 percent were directly produced by those companies, and the other 90 percent was from the products they produce. The consumption of those products is driven by consumer demand.

Clearly governments and corporations need to take responsibility, but our consumer culture must also adapt.

Attitudes towards consumerism are changing

It does seem like people are waking up from an era of over-consumption. From Marie Kondo to minimalist YouTubers, more people seem to be interested in a lifestyle of living with less. It’s commonly accepted now that experiences, not things, tend to give us the longest-lasting joy.

A return to repair and repurposing also appears to be on the rise. Thrifting for used clothes has become a popular way for Gen-Z to shop (Does that sentence make me sound old?). Sites like iFixit teach you how to repair your technology products when they inevitably break and you are tempted by the new shiny.

Perhaps it’s possible for us to steer our consumer culture away from one of constant novelty and demand to something better:

“Have good stuff (not too much), mostly reclaimed. Care for it. Pass it on.”

- Sandra Goldmark, Fixation: How to Have Stuff without Breaking the Planet

Designers can make an impact, but it needs to be at the business level

One very important question that Hector brought up was, “What should we be teaching in academia to prepare design students to tackle these issues when they work in industry?”. I think the answer here is unequivocally to teach business in design schools.

Many designers I’ve talked to, including the students in this seminar, are aware of the link between our profession and climate issues. They want to make a positive impact on the issues. I don’t think you can help but be concerned about climate change once you learn how the sausage gets made. But design decisions are almost always downstream of business decisions. To have a say in what gets made, where, how, or why, designers need a seat at the board room table.

Perhaps designers don’t usually think of themselves as business-minded. We are creatives and not number crunchers, after all. I certainly didn’t really consider myself interested in business until I started to run one. But a lot of what we learn as designers overlaps with business: understanding users, iterating solutions, managing stakeholders. A whole field of “Design Thinking” was born from what designers could teach traditional business people.

To make a positive impact, designers need to leverage these skills and apply themselves at a business level.

Do you think our consumer culture is shifting? How do you think this will affect design?

What do you think a designer’s responsibility is?