Spimes and speculative design: Sustainable product futures today

Abstract

This paper unpacks Sterling's concept of spimes and outlines how it can be developed as a lens through which to speculate and reflect upon the future of more preferable and sustainable technological products. The term spimes denotes a class of near future, sustainable, manufactured objects, and unlike the disposable products, which permeate our society today, a spime would be designed so that it can be managed sustainably throughout its entire lifecycle. This would have the goal of making the implicit consequences of product obsolescence and unsustainable disposal explicit to potential users. With the current rhetoric associated with the so-called Internet of Things promoting existing production and consumption models, the time is right to explore Sterling's concept in greater depth. In doing so, this paper examines the meaning of the term spimes, distinguishes the concept from today's Internet-connected products and posits design criteria for potential near future spime objects. The paper concludes with an initial evaluation of a speculative design fiction created by the author -the Toaster for Life -which seeks to embody several of the spime design criteria in order to facilitate audiences in considering the unsustainable people-product relationships which define present day behaviour, and also aid the author in reflecting upon the design fiction process itself.

Consumer Intervention Mapping—A Tool for Designing Future Product Strategies within Circular Product Service Systems

“…The findings from this research places the tool in contrast to most existing eco-design tools [21], and instead aligns it with the FEEI approach described by Tyl et al [24]. Relatively few examples exist of the application of speculative design [50] to the imagining of sustainable futures [30,51,52], though in common with this previous work the nature of the PSS scenarios generated through the CIM tool means they do not provide definitive 'answers' to circular design problems; rather they illustrate possible futures that cause questioning of assumptions and act as the starting point for future investigations.…”

“…However, by "failing to incorporate effective means for repair, upgrade and recycling, the lifecycles of most electronic products are designed to be brief. They are further curtailed by routine changes to functionality, aesthetics and software, resulting in older devices becoming quickly outmoded by newer designs" [30]. This becomes even more urgent as the sophistication of products increases, in tandem with strategies such as Digital Rights Management (DRM) to police the use of PSS's.…”

Designing for the End of Life of IoT Objects

“…The spimes concept thus reframes IoT con-nectivity as a tool for environmental change. By adopting the spimes approach, Stead et al contend that the lifecycle of future IoT objects could be designed to be transparent and tangibleleading to greater accountability amongst users, helping them make more sustainable decisions about the connected products they purchase, how they use them, and, ultimately, how they go about disposing of them [11]. Figure 3: A framed image and a mug depicting Jibo alongside its owner [2] In turn, another method of making environmental value ex-plicit is the "cradle to cradle" design philosophywhich en-sures objects are, from their inception, designed in such a way that their "waste" is reenvisioned as "food" for new material instantiations [1].…”

Spimes Not Things. Creating A Design Manifesto For A Sustainable Internet of Things

“…Conversely, a spime's lifecycle would be designed to be 'cradle to cradle' -cyclical, ongoing and sustainable. As Stead (2017) argues, by incorporating planned obsolescence and little to no scope for user repair, customisation or recycling, the design of current IoT products adheres to the same highly unsustainable models of production and consumption that have dominated industrial societies since the end of World War 2. In a spimebased paradigm, physical-digital connectivity would be optimised to enable devices to be trackable and traceable throughout their lifecycle.…”

“…When viewed simply, spimes are a class of near future, internet-connected objects, but unlike the disposable IoT gizmos that permeate our society today, spimes would be designed so that they can be managed sustainably throughout their entire lifecycle, from their initial production to having their components recycled and reused at the end of their life. Thus, spimes aim to make the implicit consequences of product obsolescence and unsustainable disposal explicit to potential users (Stead, 2017). Using Design Fiction methods to unpack and concretise the nature of spimes, we have developed Sterling's concept from a 'think piece' on unsustainable technologies into a multidimensional lens that design researchers and practitioners can readily harness with the ultimate aim of creating sustainable connected product futures, whilst also critiquing the harmful IoT production and consumption practices that define our present (Stead, 2016;Stead, et al, 2018).…”