DESIGN SERIES
Why Deliberate Inconvenience Could Play a Part in Product Design
The value of Inconvenience Design
We are living in an age where convenience seems to be our goal. Autonomous cars drive us to work, and smartphones allow us to access information at the touch of a finger.
Regardless of the activity, companies are continually thinking about how such opportunities can be improved, designing products or services to be faster, better, more accessible and encouraging consumers to pay more for items that will save them time and effort.
Convenience, in itself, is not a problem. However, it’s important to know when this convenience is actually detrimental to our well-being or the environment. Companies offer convenience to society in forms such as fast food, online shopping, and grocery delivery — yet this is at the expense of data privacy, anxiety, decreased fitness, and an increase of our carbon footprint.
We are no longer learning how to do things for ourselves, subsequently missing out on the satisfaction and life skills that come from such endeavours. As modernised lifestyles have caused many people to accept convenience as the norm, our perceptions have skewed to believe we’ll always want things faster, even though taking a…
