The IF:Lab product life workshop co-directed with Jonathan Chapman and was formed of 22 designers, behavioural scientists, material specialists and students. Participants used grounded theory on data gathered from a unique industry polling to form new codes, categories and concepts for product longevity. Through the formation of six new experimental proposals for domestic electronic products, that explore new ways of working with product life spans. The project was awarded support from the CETL-C (Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning through Creativity) in collaboration with Richard Morris. Participants included Ben Wilson, Kieren Jones, Ashley Phillips, Chris Lefteri, Adeel Khan, Akil Chomoko, Natalie Woolf, Kathryn Ladd, Karin Jaschke, Nick Rawcliffe, Jonathan Blaker, Hannah Scroggs, Stefano Santilli, Sarah Owen, Bernice Pan,Lesley Whitworth, James McAdam, Arash Kaynama and Chris Rose.
Data gathered from '100% Sustainable?’ 2006 participants responded to a survey that explored the character of their relationships with domestic electronic products, six salient themes were distilled; these were Narrative, Attachment, Detachment, Fiction, Surface and Consciousness. At the workshop, six corresponding, multidisciplinary teams of designers and scientists then explored these themes as the basis for design methodologies and then applied them to a product proposal.
These proposals included: a digital camera which explored attachment as a theme and long term emotional engagement through the material substance of the object; a vacuum cleaner which proposed principles of modularity to facilitate ease of upgrade; a mobile that enables the user to specify personally identified objects of significant which can be dosed into the moulding process and also explores narrative experience focusing on sound and image to create a personally-charged record of the random moments of your daily life; a television which responds to detachment as a theme, taking a common journey having pride of place in the house, to relegation to the spare room, to eventual scrapping; an induction heater ceramic toaster, which appear to operate in a mysterious and fictional way and an MP3 Player that is experienced as autonomous by acknowledging positive moods by glowing and purring or temporarily stiffening or temporarily shutting done through abuse or neglect.