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Access, not ownership is the route to better products

By Andy Polaine - August 10, 2010

in Columns

I really don't want to own another laptop, mobile phone or TV ever again. In fact, as I look around my home, I realise there are quite a few products that I feel the same way about, especially in the world of consumer electronics. That's not to say I don't want to use the latest and greatest of these products, but I don't want to buy and own more future landfill.

Like many, I wouldn't mind trading up my iPhone 3GS for the new iPhone 4. The thing that stops me is not just the price or being shackled to a rubbish telco contract for another two years. What stops me is that I really don't want my existing iPhone to just end up in a drawer. Sure, I could resell it on eBay only for it to end up in somebody else's drawer one day. Actually I'm very happy with my existing 3GS, but with a new daughter in the family, I'd like to shoot some higher quality video of her growing up. Instead of buying yet another gadget in the form of a video camera the iPhone 4 would do the job. I really just want to trade the old one in and have access to the new one until the next new one comes along. I don't need to own it forever.Inspired by Ben Reason's "not more products, please" plea I have been running some service design workshops in recent weeks with the theme Access Not Ownership. Or, as John Thackara labels it in his book In The Bubble, Use, Not Own. In the workshops most people see the sense of saved resources by not having to own everything they use, but most also stumble onto the same issue - people often don't like to share, but there are plenty of models of this working and leading to better products and services as a result.

The easiest use-not-own approach is similar to leasing, but rather than pay a monthly fee to the telco for the financing of my iPhone, for example, I'd prefer to pay a monthly fee to Apple for access to the devices of my choice. When new versions come out, I would have the choice to pay a lower monthly fee to keep using my 'old' technology or keep paying the same and swap my laptop/iPhone/iPad out for the new model. Like broadband or cable TV, as time progressed the fee remains the same but the offering improves.

This is one approach to creating a product-service ecology and elements of this which already exist - mobile phones, car leasing, vegetable box deliveries, renting a TV or washing machine. The downside of leasing is that at some point the product will most probably end up in the landfill or, if we're lucky, parts of it will be recycled or downcycled.

One big difference with a use-not-own ecology is that it can be a closed loop of manufacture and recycling. When manufacturers are responsible for the recycling there is a built in incentive for them to make products as easy and efficient to recycle as possible. In the monthly fee model, the issue of defective products is squarely with the manufacturer. They still own it and there is an incentive to make products that are built to last longer or easy to service. Longer lasting products mean that those who are happy keep their products longer and pay a lower fee provide an income stream that is otherwise lost by selling a product outright for a one-time fee.

This isn't a new model, of course. Up until relatively recently it was common for telcos to own the hardware of the telephone. There are still plenty of people paying rental for old landline telephones, some of which haven't been used for years. This model used to exist because the products were too expensive or too 'technical' to own or they provided an additional revenue stream. They were part of the service provided. Cheaper and cheaper production techniques kill this model but produce massive waste in terms of 'disposable' products.

In the workshops I ran, participants often started by making a list of things they would and would not share. After some initial resistance to the idea of sharing, most people realise that they would actually be prepared to share quite a lot of the products they own. The exceptions, it seems, are underwear and toothbrushes. Yet clothing is an untapped sharing area that is quite culturally and gender determined. More women seem to be happy to share clothes with friends than men, yet women tend to buy their wedding dresses, which are worn once only, while men most often hire their tuxedo for the occasion. At the same time more women appear to buy and sell clothes on eBay than men.

But sharing is different from having access to something. Sharing implies owning something first and then sharing it with others. Access can mean that a company or community own something rather than an individual, but that individuals can use it. It's still sharing, but it doesn't feel like you are using other people's stuff.

Workshop participants are then challenged to come up with an access model of things they normally own and at the same time think of a way to create a great customer experience that would offset the downside of not owning the products. What soon transpires is that the access model can allow people to use products that are normally way out of their price range, such as designer clothing. It can also provide a level of variety that ownership cannot, such as a different car every week.

Ben Reason's critique of The Big Rethink was that it really didn't amount to much of a rethink:

"Products sold in markets seemed to be the model for most of the case studies - they may be great products, green products or category redefining products but they are still things made, shipped and consumed in the way that, as we heard from Steve Evans of Cranfield, is unsustainable and clearly does not answer the big challenges. As Hugo Spowers (Riversimple) said 'less unsustainable is still unsustainable.'"

He goes on to describe Riversimple's business model:

"[O]nly through a 'sale of service' (the car will be charged for by the mile with fuel included) could a car manufacturer build incentives into the business to reduce its environmental impact with zero as a goal. [Riversimple's] model is to make higher margins from a more expensive car by providing it as a service to users for longer than the first five-year span that traditional manufacturers are interested in."

Again, there are plenty of existing models where this works very well for all involved. In an earlier student incarnation, I studied film and video and I remember the incredibly high build quality of Arriflex cameras. They were also unaffordable for the private individual and most production companies rent them, not only saving themselves the cost of large assets that are only used sporadically, but also saving on maintenance and insurance. The cameras and other equipment are not only built to be high quality products to use, but also built to withstand being rented out over and over and be thrown around on hasty film sets and in the back of vans. It's a world away from the flimsy plastic junk most of us end up with as consumer cameras.

Designing products to be part of an entire service-product access-not-ownership system has benefits all around. Designers can focus on designing the best product with the highest build quality possible, manufacturers enter into a longer term relationship with consumers and consumers get to use high-end products. Access, not ownership also means less use of resources and less consumer junk stowed in drawers for a few months on the way to the landfill.

(Photo credit: James Jeffrey)

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ULTRSPACE

14 years ago

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Understand the sentiment, but as a philosophy it is impractical, and is not applicable to modern, involved, and varied lives except on a very specific, limited basis. Businesses already practice this to a degree.
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Errik

14 years ago

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Great article! It certainly sets my mind thinking about the "sloppily designed and cheap products is all around us" and reasons why they do exist (as already commented here).

However I must say tha access to a product by everybody is all fine and good until we see abuse of the system. I would love to see an example of such a system working and actually benefiting people and producing profits for the investors.
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karl

14 years ago

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Hmmm you are saying in the comments: "My camera cost me something around $400, I used it for 5-months while travelling a year ago, and have used it maybe three times since. A rental travel camera, if such a system existed, may well have been cheaper in the long run. And in the mean-time, the company would be charging more for its utilization."

I see here something more on the nature of a new service more than a real change. I do not own a car for the last 8 years. I have mainly lived in cities in different countries, but I do rent a car when I need it. It's a lot more cheaper for me. But the same would not be possible for someone who needs his/her car for professional reasons.

For cameras, what you are saying (be an example) is that you are *not* a camera user, but you need some images occasionally. So you need access to products in a casual way. That's very different. It is not really about owning or not, it is about the type of activities with regards to these products.

There are many products, I decided to give up entirely because I realized that I didn't need them after evaluating the tradeoff. The society is full of services which do exactly what you are saying.

Libraries (giving access to books), Cafes (giving access to a better coffee with a big expresso machine), DVD rental shops, etc. etc.

Maybe the system you are proposing would be refined in we were thinking it in terms of community services more than individual services. The social contract is more interesting.
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Trudy Cherok

14 years ago

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We drive a 1983 Buick Station Wagon - we paid cash for it - we own it. The previous owner, one other owner, used it sparingly during family vacations during the summer months. When I have a need to park it, I purposefully park it next to expensive cars. I look forward to my own snicker because I get to imagine myself with 30 or 40 or maybe even 50 of these wagons (because that's how many I could park here, next to that expensive car, if I were to equal the cost of that one, expensive, likely-leased or likely-mortgaged cars. (And then self-righteously so, I say in my head, "sucker" to that consumptive-expensive-car-needer.) With this car, our experiences are externalized. You could even say, we create community! We don't get off on the smell of new leather, heated seats, shifting gears, zipping windows, pumping, bumping base, tenor or tone, iPod connections or DVD players. We pull-in to the parking spot, and what we get off on is what [usually] happens next: someone walks by, they smile, we talk, we all wax nostalgic and, we share stories. This is the outcome we desire to consume. I suppose we are in the minority.
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Walter J

14 years ago

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@Andy Polaine
Thank you for responding to the comments here; an interesting article and follow-up. I am simply trying to follow-through the consequences of your model.

"Would those people pay more money over time compared to constantly buying a new version of a product?"

'Those people' we are talking about are, by your description, the happy ones who keep their initial product longer, unlike those who would prefer the latest-and-greatest. Therefore, if the benefit of a lease model for that market segment over a one-time purchase model is that it avoids 'a lost revenue stream', that is to say it increases revenue, then those people certainly would be paying more money. The increased revenue for that market segment (one-time buyers who do not need the latest and greatest) comes from changing how they pay for access, yet what they get (the same product) has not changed.

Thus, while I agree that "it's not unethical to charge people for a service you provide" it is unethical to structure access so that people pay more for the same thing.

The point about the rentier class is that there is always a class of people who -do- own the products, that is to say, those who lease them to others. This economic asymmetry leads to broad problems when generalized (see: company towns, owing one's soul to the company store, which still happen in mixed economies and in contemporary parts of the world, but there are more moderate examples - ).

As for the housing point, the real estate market is simply different than the phone market. Your very point is that many people always want the latest gadget. The rapid turnover already exists; a lease model where you pay a premium-lease for the next-gen (and a regular-lease to keep the previous model) retains the current incentive for companies to get people on to new devices. The real estate market does not work like this. Perhaps an exchange+recycling incentive (return your old TV, get money off your new one) is preferable, because one is not hooked into a lease model but still retains the incentive for companies to make easily-recyclable products.
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Andy Polaine

14 years ago

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Scott -- You're right, the argument doesn't make sense, but only if you take the product half of it on its own. I disagree that most manufacturers are interested in making good products -- the evidence of sloppily designed and cheap products is all around us, but maybe we have different definitions of good. Of course a cheap camera is rubbish because it's cheap, but that doesn't answer the question of why it should be on the market in the first place.
Most manufacturers are primarily interested in making money and a large proportion of products are designed to a pricepoint that marketing has decided the market will accept. The result is that most companies do the least they can get away with, not the best that they or their designers can do. I would wager, however, that most designers would like to be designing products that are the best they can create and that people actually need and enjoy using because of their quality. Androo really answered the rest of your points for me and I agree with what her/his points.
Walter J - Yes, you're right. It's the old "you don't need a drill, you need holes in the wall" way of seeing things. Service thinking is really about thinking about outcomes, not products, but it's clear that services still need products.
I don't see how your second point necessarily follows on though. It's a question of cultural norms, not a class divide between rich and poor. In Germany, as in many European countries, it's common to rent your house/apartment, for example. Not just for a couple of years, but for 10, 20, even 30 years. It has the opposite effect to your fourth point, which is that the housing market doesn't suffer the same rapid turnover and bubbles as in the UK, Australia and, I presume (my experience is from those other countries), the USA.
With regards your fifth point, it's not unethical to charge people for a service you provide. Would those people pay more money over time compared to constantly buying a new version of a product? Not necessarily, but like a owning anything that you can rent or lease, it's a choice that people can make. If we are to use less resources and consume less in terms of products and try and have a functioning economic reason for doing so, services and access are the way to go.
Steve - Good point. It's with the intangibles, or "perennially replenishable digital artefacts", people have less of a sense of ownership, especially because they essentially lend or share a perfect copy and don't lose out themselves. My students discovered a whole batch of cultural issues about people's motivations for lending or sharing -- it's really interesting and very, very culturally specific. I'll have to write something up about it!

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Andy Polaine

14 years ago

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Ryan - but that's why the services or product-service option works well. Less consumption, but still jobs.
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Weizhan

14 years ago

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Great idea! usually ,we have so many products in the some functions, cause the market need, the products are give mass functions to fit the different customers. the manufacturers wish all kinds of people will buy their products and use it in different situations.That make low qualities and large waste directly. Then it is hard to change in the short time and little power.
But I think it can be realized in some "social" products. just like bus,subway,taxi... but not fit the "individual" products.
Access not own may be a popular style in the future.
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Ryan D

14 years ago

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Great points, Walter. The "solution" is not as simple as people try to make it out to be. Less consumption is the only way; but then, of course, we have fewer jobs, and thus, again a larger gap between rich and poor and a lot more poor.

There's just too many people.
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Luke Forward

14 years ago

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I totally agree with Walter J if you want a system to be sustainable, focusing on the outcome or the function rather than the product is a sound way to go. There was recently an article on how we should buy cars as a service rather than as product as this encourages a design that is long lasting and moves away from built-in-obsolescence. Having a service to get the latest phone is kind of missing the point. Perhaps a service that allowed products to be upgraded might work but I imagine the overheads of such a service would outweigh the potential benefits.
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Walter J

14 years ago

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(1) If the point is access, not ownership, then the solution is obtaining an outcome, not providing a product.
(2) Spending a greater portion of income on leases and licenses is a good way to broaden the divide between the rich and poor. This is as old as the idea of the rentier class.
(3) A better access model? The library is a better model than Arriflex, since the library is abstract (that is to say, it's not a specific company), it's been proven (it's been around for years), and it's not modeled on consumption.
(4) Letting people pay a fee to have access to the latest-and-greatest encourages rapid product turnover since that's where the money is. Recycling is energy intensive and is ridiculous when compared to reduction of consumption.
(5) "those who are happy keep their products longer and . . . provide an income stream that is otherwise lost by selling a product outright for a one-time fee" In other words, these people pay more money over time than they used to. Such a goal is increased wealth extraction from the consumer, not providing more value for less. So much for ethical design.
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Androo

14 years ago

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I don't think your arguments hold water, Scott.

Comparing a cheap consumer camera with the Arriflex (that was simply an example) isn't the point. If you doubled the price of a cheap consumer camera to make it both higher quality and more robust, and then used the rental-as-service model, most consumers would probably still end up paying less for a superior product. My camera cost me something around $400, I used it for 5-months while travelling a year ago, and have used it maybe three times since. A rental travel camera, if such a system existed, may well have been cheaper in the long run. And in the mean-time, the company would be charging more for its utilization.

I agree that legislation is an important factor (and may realistically be the only feasible one) in encouraging manufacturers to take responsibility for recovering their products. But once there is some flow of product back to the manufacturer, they would be operating a terrible business if they didn't optimize the end-of-life material recovery cycle. Designing for quick disassembly and re-use or downcycling of materials would quickly become a significant revenue stream for manufacturers - instead of paying someone to bury it in a landfill, they could spend a small amount for disassembly and then reap the benefits. Have a predictable flow of incoming materials would also smooth out blips in supply-chain management.
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Steve Portigal

14 years ago

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Great article; I love the stories from the workshop; it's starting to reveal the cultural norms that underpin current behaviors and the barriers that any change agent (designer, manufacturer, advocacy group, etc.) needs to get over (i.e., design through).

I'm intrigued - at least as a thought experiment - about how we might feel about sharing intangible - or less tangible consumptions: digital media, physical media, experiences, data, virtual stuff. While the motivation for sharing (reduce landfill/improve quality) may not play out the same way when it comes to passing along a Netflix DVD before mailing it back, or having your music in the cloud instead of on your HD, there seem to be more rapidly emerging business models, usage models and expectations in those realms that might provide thin-edges to understand and ultimately change across other categories.
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Scott

14 years ago

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I couldn't disagree more.

(most) Manufacturers ARE currently interested in making good products as there is always warranty and brand image issues. It would be very short sighted to have a business model that opposes this.

The real reason that a cheap consumer camera is a piece of crap is because it's cheap. If that is all I can afford, I probably won't be able to rent an Arriflex camera either more than a day a year.

You can't compare consumer cameras to professional cameras that you admit not even a production company can afford to own.

As far as land filling goes, just because you aren't throwing products out doesn't mean the manufacturer isn't once they get them back. Only real consumer pressure and government legislation will encourage actual reprocessing of materials.

Just look at BMW who take back a large percentage of their cars (if only in Europe) after their lifespan while people continue to own them.

I am not against the idea of this system but I find fault with your arguments for it.
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