ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how a deeper understanding of acts of use might be helpful in extending both the physical and emotional durability of products. Such attentiveness towards the actual behavioural dimension of person-thing encounters can enable designers to encourage longer-lasting interactions with products and services, consequently minimising the consumption of resources. The word sustainability, when attached to product design, has largely shown to be highly problematic. Indeed, in true umbrella-term fashion, it misleadingly suggests a commonality of intent for practitioners that instead operate with quite different agendas. Promoting sustainability by production can be intended as a response to the ecological impact of relentlessly wasteful manufacturing practices. The constant flood of products, interventions, experimental and conceptual work adopting strategies is clear testament to a predominant focus on production-related concerns. A truly sustainable design discipline has to undergo a radical cultural shift that would hinge upon a concern for immaterial issues, prior to and as a precondition for material ones.
