What we discovered by dissecting products with iFixit.com’s co-founder Kyle Wiens
Kyle Wiens — Co-founder of ifixit.com, the Internet’s home for product repair manuals and how-to guides on fixing almost anything— joined us as a mentor last week at our São Paulo fellowship program. Here is what we learned about the inner workings of everyday consumer electronic products:
Stuff is hard to pull apart
There has been a disturbing design trend over the last 2 decades: consumer products are often designed to lock people out of the possibility of repair. This manifests in tricky little tactics such as designing new screw heads that are really hard to find, gluing and soldering parts together so you have to break the item to get inside, and some companies have even gone as far as making it illegal to open their products to repair them.
Some products do really well with design for disassembly, some products not.
Kyle and the team at ifixit.com have developed a device rating system that allows consumers to identify how repairable a new product on the market is.
“A device with a perfect score will be relatively inexpensive to repair because it is easy to disassemble and has a service manual available. Points are docked based on the difficulty of opening the device, the types of fasteners found inside, and the complexity involved in replacing major components. Points are awarded for upgradability, use of non-proprietary tools for servicing, and component modularity.”
Design for un-repairability is actually a thing
It sounds like a conspiracy, but planned obsolescence (when products are intentionally designed to break) is a real thing, and so is design for un-repairability (a term we just made up). We discovered that many products have all sorts of design features that would make it super hard to upgrade or repair their inner workings. The iFixit pro toolkit helps overcome these barriers to repair by providing all the weird screw heads that are not commercially available. Even so, once you get inside, there are many items and factors that can make your likelihood of repair really hard. But ifixit is helping overcome this with all the under-generated guides that clearly demonstrate how to get in and safely repair all you gadgets.
Repairing should be a right
Anyone can repair!
There are over 21,000 free repair manuals on ifixit.com and we discovered anyone can repair. Many of our fellows made exclamations about “how easy it was to take the product apart and get inside” and one said “I had no idea I could actually repair something!” Yep, you can! And you don’t need to be a handy (wo)man or engineer to do it. From cell phones to handbags, repair is one of the best ways to embrace sustainability, reducing waste and maintaining the value of materials and resources. Get repairing!
PS: If you live in New York and believe in your right to repair, take action! New York has the chance to pass the first Fair Repair Bill in the US. You can learn more and write to your senators and representatives here.
