My first love was art and design, and probably due to that, I have always been fascinated with how product designers and even planners approach making their many design choices. Beauty and functionality are obvious factors for good design, but how well do they consider the end user's experience? Do they also consider the ultimate affect on the environment? Simplicity of use? The possibility of creating more problems than they solve? Sometimes they do a great job of balancing these factors, and sometimes not. Considering the capriciousness of buying decisions, it may or may not matter.
Marketers hope to shape buyer behavior with messages that appeal to the buyer's psychology and how they make purchasing decisions, even to the point of meticulously designing retail stores to take advantage of these factors. Buyer choices among products often comes down to feelings and impressions, brand loyalty and opportunity for best prices, or at least their momentary perceptions of these at the time.
People who have the intention of behaving in the best interest of the environment often have to make decisions with little or no knowledge of its consequences for the environment, or of the product's long term quality or expected longevity.
In a free enterprise, we vote with our feet.
Nevertheless, those buyer choices matter. In a free enterprise system they can reward or punish the designer's and product manager's choices. Their choice to purchase, or not, is ultimately the greatest force for shaping a product's success or failure, and will, in turn, affect the product's future design and possibly even that of competing products. Peter Drucker called this the power of "voting with your feet".
In free enterprise, we vote with our feet. If the proposition made by the product's design, functionality, ease of use and/or price are not satisfactory to us, then we can walk away and purchase another product, or buy from another store. Nowhere is that more true than on the Internet, where walking away is just a click away.
I hope to add some information regarding good product design and how buyer choices may affect the environment and their satisfaction with the product over the long haul. I hope to add value for buyers while they consider their "votes" by bringing more factors forward into the light and possibly bring some alternative products into consideration.
Thanks for following this effort and I look forward to interacting with you as it unfolds,
Gary Edson
