Planned Obsolescence

Car manufacturers had a problem in the 1950's. A car can last for twenty years or more, how can they get people to buy a car more often? Well, Brook Stevens came up with a solution and called it planned obsolescence. To this day, this is a rather maligned concept to those who don't actively employ it.

Now, this isn't the idea that things simply fall apart after a given of time. Rather, you plan to make things look and feel old. It's a design issue. Each year you make a thing incrementally smaller, bigger, or different in evolution. The idea isn't to force people to give up their things, but to make it instantly recognisable when the thing came out. That way, the same features are both a selling point when it's new and a reason to get a new thing when it's old.

In the 1950's, it was the car fins. Today, it's most obvious in Apple Products where new versions come out every year or so with an incremental change in features and size. The original concept held that the incremental change is the primary driver in new purchases, but the fact that the model and year is immediately visible positively incentivize the decision to upgrade and penalizes the decision to use out of date models just because of the way we interact with one another.

The thing everyone thinks of, the redesign of things to wear out faster, is a poor substitute pursued by industries that cannot effectively vary the look of their product. Originally seen in things like light bulbs, this methodology cannibalizes their own sales if anyone breaks ranks and maintain quality in spite of their competition.