Eternally Yours: Visions of Product Endurance

Eternally Yours - gather and distribute knowledge and experience on designing "immortal" products.

Consumers surround themselves more and more with products they feel less and less attached to. A complex composition of futile disappointments makes us almost try to find excuses to get rid of things. The Eternally Yours Foundation searches for solutions.

This could be achieved by reviewing the design step in the product lifecycle in order to include designing of the product's career plan, not just its appearance.

Product Life-Cycle

Career Plan

• Maintenance
  System of services around the product
  
• Meaning
  Rituals, Stories (Advertising),
  (Consumption = selection, purchase, use, maintenance, repair and disposal) -> Choice -> 
  Emotional Attachment -> Identity (Exclusiveness) -> Rituals (etc.)
  
• Function
  Opportunities and Possibilities

Enzio Manzini says there are 3 main ways to address this problem of material culture.

His 3 scenarios of quality are:

1. "Eternalisation" of Matter - you have products last longer by increasing their value to the consumer
2. Dematerialisation or Matter - replace a product with a service
3. Matter as Medium - production of objects that last a short time, but in a context of a system that ensures maximum recyclability and therefore durability of materials

• Production Derived Aesthetics

Reverse Engineering

What was the brief that designed this thing??

1. Why do you think the product was designed?
2. What was its primary function?
3. What secondary functions has it developed over its lifespan?
4. What interesting stories could you tell?

Write a short story about or from the point of view of your product.

Etentally Yours