Luxury & new luxury, quality & equality (original) (raw)
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Malmö högskola/Kultur och samhälle, 2010
To have sustainable lifestyles, individuals need to have support from physical and social infrastructures, as well as institutions, however the major decisions about a sustainable lifestyle are being made at individual and social levels. This research is an exploration into understanding the social influences that drive an individual’s materialistic behaviour, and using that understanding to develop interaction design solutions that reflect on materialism and promote sustainable behaviour and life- styles. An extensive literature review is conducted on various aspects of materialism from the product design, interaction design - that have focused on the material and performative nature of artefacts - and social innovation perspectives. Here, existing work, such as simplicity movements, have promoted the idea that an individual’s life can be more fulfilling if they engage in activities that are purposive and materially light. How- ever, since it has been difficult to convince large populations of the society about the benefits of sustainable living, sociology research provides a platform to understand how our perception of self and social surroundings impacts our lifestyles in materialistic ways. From this understanding , two stages of empirical studies were conducted for design material, firstly exploring the concept of materialism from a sharing and ownership perspective, and then, intervention based studies that gathered insight on the use of techniques that promote reflection on these behaviours. A set of rich insights were identified on methods for design that promote the reflection on materialistic behaviour; focusing predominantly on experiences and identity …
Journal of Design, Business & Society, Volume 5, Number 2, 2019
Reifying luxury, gold to golden: how the showroom became a digital showreel From object (gold) to experience (golden): experiencing luxury by abstracting the object Carta, Silvio; de Kock, Pieter This article focuses on the notion of space of luxury. It explores the passage of time; in how showrooms and flagship stores, embedded in the tradition of symbolism and paradigms of symbolic elements, intersect with cutting-edge digital technologies. Also analysed is the resulting customer experience, evident at this meeting between old and new technologies. This study consists of three parts. Firstly, a framework is established by way of a discussion of key concepts underpinning the physical, symbolical and cultural characteristics of the architecture of consumerism and luxury. Secondly, several case studies are examined to help understand the transition from the use of physical elements (materials, spatial qualities, lighting and surfaces) which generate exclusivity, surprise and sophistication in high-end showrooms, to the employment of new digital technologies-where the luxury component is provided by access to exclusive information and experience. The final part discusses how data and information technologies are radically transforming the current luxury market, where luxury is based on accessibility, visibility and perception. Traditionally luxury spaces were based on a physical demarcation of territories of exclusivity. This contrasts with new luxury spaces that allow for exclusivity to be invisible and ubiquitous; enhancing not only its own imposition of narrow market segmentation, but also acting as bridging elements into every other market sector. Traditionally, the quality and durability of experience around visual meaning, has always been a prerequisite for luxury. As our visual world reorients around the invisible, what we cannot see still has to be sustainable to the point of scarcity. This study holds that visual sustainability, as part of the larger orbit of perception's five senses, still remains the primary container of meaning, because we see through our experience. Through this experience then, luxury is reinventing itself as a digital showreel; not only of what exists, but of what is possible. ___________________________________________________________________
Product Experience and Luxury Values
Designing for luxury is a challenge since it requires knowledge on the concept of luxury and how to transfer this knowledge to product design. Literature on the concept of luxury offers a variety of definitions of the term and discusses the role and meaning of luxury by referring to particular disciplines such as economics, sociology and marketing. These studies occasionally touch upon aspects that are associated with luxury products; however there is no specific research that provides guidelines or frameworks to support designers in luxury product development. This study argues that luxury values found across the literature can contribute to defining dimensions of luxury product experience. Presenting the historical background and the definitions of the term ‘luxury’, this paper explores four different types of luxury values through product examples, and discusses relationships amongst these values. The findings point out a need to study luxury values within different aspects of product design, which can extend the current understanding beyond materialization and into the realms of user-product interaction, design and technology relationships, and design for experience.
Sustainable interaction design: invention & disposal, renewal & reuse
2007
Abstract This paper presents the perspective that sustainability can and should be a central focus of interaction design-a perspective that is termed Sustainable Interaction Design (SID). As a starting point for a perspective of sustainability, design is defined as an act of choosing among or informing choices of future ways of being. This perspective of sustainability is presented in terms of design values, methods, and reasoning.
Business Strategy and the Environment, 2005
industrial society where information, services and knowledge are the main value creators, but even though Western economies are becoming more immaterial the world still brims with physical products, and material consumption is increasing. As industrial production is becoming more efficient in economic terms, the abundance of products and the way they are used appear to impede the path toward sustainability. In this world of material abundance, product life cycles are becoming shorter. Car manufacturers launch new models at a faster pace than earlier, clothing retail chains continuously update their collections instead of renewing them on a seasonal basis, and food retailers provide 'fashionable' foods from all over the world for limited time periods. This is to say that production and consumption is becoming increasingly fashion sensitive and dependent on aesthetics and well designed products and services. This special issue takes as its starting point the role of sustainability and design in a world of abundance. Sustainability in a post-industrial, or late capitalist, society gains from a simultaneous conceptualization of production and consumption. Production management and marketing are disciplines that traditionally have been treated as separate sub-disciplines in the general field of management studies. Production and marketing are seen as two sides of a process, and according to Firat and Venkatesh mainstream management theory rests on a dichotomy of production and consumption (Firat and Venkatesh, 1995). To produce implies to extract, construct and provide goods and services that have a value. Each step in production implies an increase in value. The latin verb consumere, from which consuming stems, implies a decay of value. This is to say that as soon as the consumer lays hands on the good it starts to deteriorate in value. This dichotomy gives rationale to economic growth. Since the consumer destroys, the producer constantly needs to produce new goods and services, and hence the wheels of the economy can continue to spin. However, placing the producer in opposition with the consumer has been questioned by scholars such as Keller, and Firat and Venkatesh (Keller, 1993; Firat and Venkatesh, 1995). To them, economic and cultural activities blend together. Consumption is, at least in late capitalist societies in the Western world, a co-producing expressive project where goods are consumed in terms of their sign value as well as, or even rather than, their 'functional' characteristics (Featherstone, 1991). Several scholars have argued that everyday life is undergoing a process of aestheticization (e.g. Featherstone, 1991). This is to say that the symbolic and aesthetic appearance of goods and services become the primary means of everyday experience. Consumption in such a late capitalist version is thus
Design, lifestyles and sustainability. Aesthetic consumption in a world of abundance
Business Strategy and the Environment, 2005
This paper strives for a conceptualization of sustainability, design and contemporary consumption. By sketching out how effective production systems have created an abundance of products, the paper links this development to the aestheticization of society and an increased interest in design. In market economies characterized by profusion, corporations engage in activities filling their offerings with aura, aesthetics, symbols and meaning. In such lands of plenty, conspicuous consumption becomes a thoroughly expressive activity and highly problematic for actors with ambitions to design a sustainable future. Our conclusion is that sustainability must ultimately be seen as intertwined with social processes such as fashion, identity and identity construction.
Sustainability, Value and the User Experience
As designers and design educators, we bear some level of responsibility for the flood of products produced by the global economy every year. A visible consequence of that responsibility is the strong and growing emphasis on 'sustainability' whenever we meet as a community to discuss the future of design as a discipline. One curious aspect of the conversation about 'sustainability' and 'sustainable design' is a lack of precision regarding the words themselves. A certain level of ambiguity is to be expected, given the wide range of disciplines involved in the product design process and the relatively recent growth of interest in these concepts. However, we believe the need for more effective action, in the face of globalization pressures, requires that we begin to think more precisely about what 'sustainability' actually means, in terms of the products we produce, and the practitioners we educate.
ENSOULMENT AND SUSTAINABLE INTERACTION DESIGN
This paper considers the concept of ensoulment in relation to the design principle of promoting quality & equality within Sustainable Interaction Design (SID). The design-theoretic origins and implications are discussed and the background needed to understand this concept and principle are stated. Appropriate design research methods are discussed. Parts of a completed survey are described and initial findings from an ongoing elicitation study for collecting personal inventories is also presented. The implications of the survey and elicitation study for larger scale design research are described, with an eye towards future research.