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Tragedy of the Commons

Product development has always operated at the intersection of business, technology, and people. Now, it is time to add one more factor to the equation: the environment. Read More

(Updated on July 24, 2024)

Modern product development is a complex endeavor requiring the careful management of competing demands and constraints. A common framework for evaluating a product’s success identifies three key factors:

Business: How viable is the product from an investment and profit point of view? How effective will it be from a competitive and brand point of view?

Technology: How feasible is the product to develop and manufacture? Does the company have the required technology in-house or do partnerships need to be considered?

People: How desirable is the product to potential customers? Is it satisfying user desires or addressing unmet needs?

Seasoned businesspeople know that the greatest likelihood of success comes from products that address all three factors.

As the glut of available products in recent years has made a pure Business- and Technology-driven approach less profitable, the People factor has gained increasing prominence in the business world. Companies are undertaking intensive research efforts of every kind, eager to develop an ever more nuanced sense of their customers’ needs and wants. At frog, we employ many types of ethnographic research and contextual inquiry, spending time in users’ homes and offices to better understand how our products function in the lives of consumers.

In the past, I have argued that such research is, in itself, an eco-friendly activity because it reduces the speed with which products – and the raw materials we heat, beat, and treat to create them (as the biomimicry pioneer Janine Benyus puts it) – end up in the landfill. Ideally, this type of research is a win-win situation: it helps a company make products that are better suited to the consumers at hand, encouraging purchase and establishing the lasting emotional connections that cause a product to be kept and used longer. The notion of the modern-day family heirloom seems almost quaint – what from today’s industrial culture can you imagine being passed down to re-appear on an episode of Antiques Roadshow two centuries from now? – but by creating products that are held onto longer, we can make better use of the precious resources we have.

That said, longer-lasting products are not enough. And in fact, the notion of user-centered design can itself be environmentally harmful. Users may be unintentionally selfish when they ask for new product features or attributes. In their understandable personal drive for greater convenience and lower costs, they often ask for things that, when multiplied to an industrial scale, are ecologically damaging. Bottled water, for example, has been a massive growth category in the last few years, appealing to customers because of its fantastic convenience. For busy parents shuttling kids to soccer or Little League, a case of bottled water stashed in the back of the minivan is an easy way to keep the kids hydrated. But do parents realize the cumulative impact of all those bottles? Chris Jordan’s amazing photographs graphically illustrate this multiplication of disposable waste. Small, individual choices that seem innocuous at the time add up to a problem of global proportions.

frog Ashley Menger recently undertook an experiment to examine her personal contribution to this global trash problem, carrying with her at all times any non-recyclable garbage she produced during a two-week trial. Most of the trash she carried was generated by companies eager to deliver convenience to their customers, like paper napkins and Styrofoam containers. With convenience, it often seems, comes waste.

Americans are the worst offenders in this area. We constitute 4% of the world’s population but use 25% of its resources. We produce 603 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions every year (20.1 per capita), about one quarter of the global total. Americans transform 500 trillion pounds of resources into nonproductive solids and gases (waste water, CO2 emissions, hazardous wastes, and so on) each decade. While it is certain that emerging markets like China are having an increasing impact (China now ranks number two behind the US in carbon emissions, but with four times the population), it is clear we need to get the American house in order in terms of business and consumption practices.

Accomplishing this means putting a check in place on the habit of simply giving customers what they ask for. Smart designers know that customers often ask for things that don’t make sense in a broader context. “Users ask for features like kids ask for candy,” says Rob Haitani, the software architect on the original Palm Pilot PDA. Like too much candy, too many features are bad for you, even though they sound appealing at first. A recent New Yorker article by James Surowiecki describes a study which showed that people are quite poor at predicting how they will actually use a product in the future – so they tend to ask for more features than they will ever need. Companies who are good at doing deep user research don’t take feature requests at face value. Instead, we must start to evaluate products and features from an ecological standpoint, with a broader understanding of the impact these requests have.
The Tragedy of the Commons

Ours is a dilemma that goes all the way back to Adam Smith – the “tragedy of the commons.” His scenario was this: There are a number of farmers who share a common pasture for their cattle to graze. In this “free” resource situation, it is obvious that for an individual farmer, it makes sense to add more cows to his herd, as it will improve his milk and meat output at the market. But if every farmer, or even a significant number of them, does this, the pasture is quickly ruined by over-grazing (as the grandson of a cattle farmer, I can relate to this scenario).

Garrett Hardin described the dilemma in 1968, “Each [farmer] is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit – in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.” To avoid tragic consequences for all, a balance must be struck between individual needs and the greater good.

Today, “the commons” is the ecosystem of the entire planet. We are each treating this world as a “free” resource, using it for our immediate, individual benefit while collectively poisoning it for everyone. Like the farmers who over-graze the commons, we are over-grazing our planet. The consequences are dire for us and for the species we share the commons with, on whom we are dependent for survival. If they die, we die.

The E-Factor

To quell the ecological damage being caused by our current industrial production system, we must contextualize feature requests within this broader understanding. User desires are no longer justification enough for production. We must add an Environmental factor to the historical rubric of Business, Technology, and People. And just as we sideline products and services that fail to adequately meet standards of viability, feasibility, or desirability, so too must we reject initiatives that are not sustainable. Ignoring this “E-factor” should be considered poor business practice and poor design – no matter how much consumers might seem to demand it.

While there are established methods and metrics for evaluating the other three factors, evaluating the E-factor can be a difficult undertaking. The elements under consideration are many (carbon emissions, use of recycled materials or heavy metals, collateral social costs, etc.) and prioritizing them will always be a subjective practice. There is no agreed-upon set of standards, and those methods of evaluation that do exist can be too slow and too expensive to be practical for businesses. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), for example, offers a thorough assessment of environmental impact. But, as Daniel Imhoff writes, “An LCA has a noble goal: untangling the intricate flows of energy, raw materials, pollution, transportation, and other factors in the hope of accounting for all the environmental and social costs of production. But true LCAs can take years and tens of thousands of dollars to conduct – and for most decision makers, they’re far too complicated.”

The enormity of this task can lead to a state of paralysis. But we can begin by demanding accountability on the part of businesses and designers alike. Companies need to start taking responsibility for this E-factor, just as they do for the other three, tracking their progress in public annual reports. As designers, we have an inherent role in this, and while we are far from all-powerful (would that we were!), we must push this issue deeper into our own work. The resources, the knowledge, the tools and – increasingly – the eco-friendlier materials and manufacturing methods are out there, but we must become more adept and more invested in using them.

Adam Smith cast the “tragedy of the commons” as an inevitability. But we cannot afford this outcome when the commons is the Earth itself. We are not going to fix this overnight, but we can start by prioritizing the issue as we do our bottom line. The change will require optimism, nuts and bolts pragmatism and, above all, original thinking – all characteristics that forward-looking designers and businesspeople have in abundance.

Al Gore quips that, “Political will is a renewable resource.” Likewise, I believe that ingenuity is our greatest renewable resource. Let’s put it to use for the good of the commons, and for us all.

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Adam Richardson is the director of product strategy for frog design. This article originally appeared in frog’s Design Mind “Green” issue.

 

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