How we design connected products for sustainability should include more than thinking through resource optimisation (e.g., energy consumption). A sustainable product is also a product that people value and hold onto for many years, thereby keeping it out of landfills and lowering the demand for more resource extraction.
While going through some old projects I stumbled upon this eBay listing for the FLO TV "PTV". I wasn't the lead designer on this one, but I was part of a group regularly reviewing it and it ended up using most of the UI I designed for the Automotive product. Anyway, this thing is absolutely useless without the service, which was long ago killed and the spectrum sold off to AT&T.
I remember at the time we (the designers) were making the case that it was a bad decision to launch this without the ability to side load your own media. If I recall correctly I believe it was something around our content partners not wanting it. I think there was maybe a concern that people would just buy the device but not subscribe to the service as well if they could side load.
Because of that short-term decision though these things, even new in the box, are absolutely worthless. Worse than worthless, because apparently somebody is storing this for whatever reason. It is conceivable that with the ability to side load some of these devices could still be in use. I still have my 1st generation iPad in service as a karaoke server for my daughter.
It was kind of a neat device. Not the most brilliant idea ever but the service concept was ahead of its time though as I believe real-time content will become more en vogue with 5G (not just video but spatial data). We'll always have the time-shifted stuff but there's some content and use cases where real-time adds tremendous value (e.g., sports).
In this new era where connectivity is becoming standard for all kinds of physical products, we on the digital side need to collaborate deeper with those on the electronics and industrial side. This is where I take tremendous inspiration from John Maeda's framing of the Computational Design. How we re-conceive of these new connected products from a user and sustainability perspectives is a rich area for us to push onto the agenda. Part of the sustainability agenda needs to be how we manufacture things that not only have an immediate utility but a long-lasting emotional value, so that people will invest in repairing instead of discarding. So they will pass them onto other people, find new uses for them, or if need be recycle/upcycle.
I'm challenging myself and those I work with to inject this topic into the discussion. Shareholders are increasingly focused on sustainability, CEO's are expected to lead good corporate citizenry through the sustainability initiatives of their companies (and increasingly responsible), and we now have a good chunk of an entire continent very focused on this (Europe, where I live). It's not simply a "feel good" tactic any longer. It's a necessary and urgent agenda that needs to be raised in every meeting where a new product is being created.
