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The Times They Are A-Changin', Bob Dylan sang 60 years ago. That record should be played on double speed today...at least. None of us have ever seen such a frantic pace of change during our lifetime. Politics, environment, technology, regulations, business models and market dynamics, all of them in flux.
Soon there will also be the DPP regulation for products sold in the European Union (affecting also components in those products), a major piece of regulation, affecting business profoundly.
But how will it affect You as Product Designer?
Nobody can say for sure, but let's make informed guesses.
(We look beyond the initial mad scramble to merely obtain the data, at the longer run.)
Product Design - the target of DPP
The stated objective of the DPP regulation and ESPR, the "parent" regulation is to change the way we design products and production, to make it more circular and with less impact on our environment. Naturally, DPP will lead to fundamental changes in all aspects of design.
In each an every design aspect, every choice of materials, components and suppliers, you will need to find out the environmental data of the choices at hand. Where did they get their inputs from? How were they manufactured? What is the environmental impact of different logistical alternatives? It won't be enough to examine design specifications like colour, size, weight, strength, durability and price, but you will need to balance them with their environmental impact. Because their "environmental record" will be part of yours, transparently for consumers and other customers.
We probably can expect design and product development to become a much more extended process, likely to force you to deal with discontent stakeholders who wonder why "things take so much longer these days". As design process take longer, the planning horizon will need extending too.
Gradually, you will work out processes to streamline these added aspects of design work, like listing and classifying suppliers based on their "environmental performance" and their ability/willingness/speed in providing such information. Probably you will start preferring suppliers who have their environmental information in order, easily available during your discussions along in the design process.
Probably, in you choice of suppliers, you will not only need to evaluate the data they can provide to you and your design work, but also the reliability and ease with which they will be able to provide input data for your DPP (or for you to pass on to your customers who, in turn, deliver the DPP). After all, the DPP data will be part of the wider product you design, and the quality of their data supply will be as important as the quality of materials. Is their DPP-data system compatible with yours?
You will need to take greater care to make products easy, or at least possible, to repair. And work closer with product communications on maintenance and repair manuals.
In addition to constructing products, you will need to pay attention to how they can be "deconstructed" at end of life. Similar to packaging in some countries where it is designed for one part to be recycled as paper, another as plastic and yet another as metal, you will need to consider how the entire product can be decomposed into units for recycling or disposal in separate ways.
Maybe a new profession will develop? We're used to differentiate between industrial designers, graphic designers, fashion designers et cetera. Maybe we will se environmental designers, specialised in minimising the environmental impact of products? At least, we can expect this to become a subject taught in design schools.
For sure, there's a fair bit of guesswork in these predictions, but educated guesses, hopefully.
Do you have any added guesses for what it will be like working as a product designer five to ten years from now?
Image by gorodenkoff on iStock
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