Designers should plan for long-term effects of their products

Faced with tight schedules and focused on shipping product, designers rarely think beyond the product's core goal: to fulfil user needs while providing necessary business outcomes. This reductionistic approach in design overlooks the impact of the product beyond its intended scope. However, in many cases a product affects the user and the environment long after the product is out of use.

Here are some real-life examples of how unintended outcomes negatively affected the product, its performance and caused unplanned side effects:

  • Airbnb landlords rose overall rent prices because they converted their properties from long-term rent to short-term rent, causing the scarcity of properties - thus raising the prices
  • To reduce commute time couple of minutes, Waze routes the traffic through quiet and narrow streets, causing them to became dangerous for pedestrians and living in those streets uncomfortable
  • Electric cars seem eco-friendly while in use, but their batteries and sophisticated electronic components have a dramatic negative impact on the environment - both before and after the vehicle's lifespan.

The standard part of design practice should be thinking about long-term consequences of the solution. The designer should imagine how the product will impact the users' life other than what is planned? What are secondary and tertiary impacts on users' life? What is its impact to the environment and on third parties who never intended to interact with it?

Then comes the obsolescence. What is products lifetime? When the product will become obsolete? What happens after that? Is there a elaborate strategy for product disposal, be it digital or physical?

One way to overcome unintentionality in design is to conduct premortem sessions, to think about the possible consequences and edge cases and bad things that could happen after the design has been deployed. In some cases, you can even think one year after the deployment, or five years after you have deployed the project, and brainstorm bad outcomes.

A premortem proactively identifies the project risks and addresses them before they happen.

Evergreen design prioritize long-term consequences over short-term gains.

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