The Ethics of Planned Obsolescence

The Ethics of Planned Obsolescence

I'm working on a business plan at the moment that is somewhat different in type than my normal work.  It has a physical as well as software/digital element to it, I'm normally just seen as a software guy.

The physical element of the product interacts with the software side of it, this connection is what actually makes the product unique in its own marketplace.

When I start working on designs for software systems there are a number of criteria that I put down on a list to help me establish the key metrics for the design and the development. In this particular instance I went for:

• Portability
• Robustness
• Cost
• Performance
• Maintainable

What does this list mean in practice?

Portability: The software design and development should be as generic as possible to allow it to work on as many devices as possible with as little device-specific coding as possible.

Robustness: The code should be factored to be as simple as possible - the consequence would be that the code would be robust. If you try and be clever and complex with code it will inherently somewhat unstable.

Cost: The code should not require any specialist developers to create. Everything should be standard in every respect to allow the work to be achievable with the most common human resource.

Performance: The code should have a benchmarked set of performance criteria to ensure a certain level of efficiency across the code base on a per-platform basis.

Maintainable: This relates to the code being documented correctly, both the remarks within the code base itself and external documentation that covers the full code base and its construction.

Whenever I am making decisions for either the business plan or the technical specification for the software I will normally run down the list above and see how my thoughts hold up against the criteria I've laid down.

As you can see from the list above, my approach to creating software is to make the most reliable and manageable piece of software I can, using the lowest reasonable cost and creating a minimum standard in performance.  The question is if this approach is going to work well when there is a physical, non-digital component to the product?

What is "Planned Obsolescence"?

Planned obsolescence or built-in obsolescence in industrial design is a policy of planning or designing a product with a limited useful life, so it will become obsolete, that is, unfashionable or no longer functional after a certain period of time. Planned obsolescence has potential benefits for a producer because to obtain continuing use of the product the consumer is under pressure to purchase again, whether from the same manufacturer (a replacement part or a newer model), or from a competitor who might also rely on planned obsolescence.

This isn't a new idea. The Phoebus Cartel was a collection of the worlds largest producers of light bulbs in 1924. They agreed to change the duration the bulbs would last from 2500 hours to 1000 hours artificially - making users buy new bulbs more frequently. Move forward 60 years and we now find printer ink cartridges being produced under the same basic premise. 

What's the ethical dilemma?

The physical part of the product I am currently working with is small and plastic - therefore its a losable and breakable. In either circumstance the product is useless without the physical part. It would be possible to include a design change (at some cost) that would limit the chances of losing the plastic part. There are also choices to make about the material type and standards that the physical piece is made from to reduce the potential for it to physically break. The customer is essentially buying something that would appear to have a certain element of performance and durability and I know its going to stop working, fail or wear out quicker than the user would expect.

Both changes would increase the cost of the product - in terms of design and manufacture - which has the correlating effect in the business plan of making the start-up costs higher and that has the effect of it being harder for the company to make a profit and survive.

I can remove the obsoleting factors and create a harder business plan to deliver or leave the product as is - create obsolescence and give the business a better chance at the consumers expense.

The question at this point is am I being unethical by creating obsolescence?

Personal opinion

My personal feeling here is that I need to the right thing for the people paying me to write the business plan and the specification. The obsolescence needs to be identified in the document with options to remove that obsolescence documented as potential alternatives to the original plan. If the founders of the new company see the ethical side of this as being important they can delete the original option out and leave one of the better options in - its their choice. Equally, they could just delete my options and leave the original design and manufacture option in the plan - in the end its the option that has the biggest chance of success for the company. The hybrid solution is to start with the original design for a period of time and then transition onto one of the more ethical options as part of the companies ongoing development of the product.

Where does this leave me?

My approach to the software development can't really help me with the physical aspect to this product. The plastic aspect of the product will always be more susceptible to failure than the software as I can't apply the same principles to it. This could mean that the whole product (and therefore company) fails on the non-digital side of things. In the end there is a compromise between what's right and what's feasible, their not always hand in hand as concepts.