How materials, craftsmanship, and engineering create products built to last — and why timeless design outlives trends.
Every product we purchase has a lifecycle. From the fabric of a dress to the stitching on your winter coat, each component influences its longevity, and the amount of waste it may eventually generate.
While more general, it includes elements of how durable goods are defined and what to seek.
Designing for durability creates long-lasting products that build stronger brands by fostering customer trust and loyalty through demonstrated quality, reducing environmental impact, and differentiating from competitors who prioritize planned obsolescence. In a world where fast fashion, disposable gadgets, and single-use plastics dominate, the concept of durability feels almost revolutionary.
A scholarly dive into product durability, useful for understanding how design affects lifespan.
Durability has become a valuable design aspect for designers, manufacturers, service providers, and end-of-life actors. Nowadays, developing products for new business models based on renting and servitization practices is of paramount importance.
Extending the lifetime of products enables material resource savings and provides an effective resource efficiency strategy within a circular economy paradigm. Although consumer demand for longer lasting products that can be easily repaired has been on the rise, it is not certain that consumers are fully able to identify such products and willing to pay a premium for them.
Extending the lifespan of products and parts is seen as a solution in the transition towards a circular economy. There are many proposed design approaches argued to facilitate this. However, extending the lifespan of products and parts is not always desirable, and product developers should instead strive to design for a specific longevity; the product's optimal lifetime.
Reads that inspire thoughtful ownership and durability.
A classic on responsible, durable design—products that serve people for the long term.
How clothes are made, valued, and repaired—context for buying fewer, better pieces.
A case for skilled hands and repair -- why fixing things is good for people and society.
Product Design Best Practices combines the principles of mechanical, electrical, and software design processes. It integrates traditional, Lean, and Agile methods into a compendium of the 50 design best practices used in industry.
The real product business isn’t just selling online. It is about building products customers actually want, protecting your ideas, working with trusted factories, and selling everywhere your shoppers buy: Amazon, your own website, small retailers, and big box stores.
Innovators today are told to run loose and think lean in order to fail fast and succeed sooner. But in a world obsessed with the new, where cool added features often trump actual customer needs, it’s the consumer who suffers. In our quest to be more agile, we end up creating products that underwhelm.
Snapshots that reveal how durability, value, and culture intersect.
Consumers are willing to pay on average 9.7% more for sustainably produced or sourced goods
Average lifespan of small appliances like toasters has fallen to 5–6 years down from 10–15
Consumers said they want durable goods to last 1.7 to 3.6 times longer than they actually use them.