thing:
No. Never. I notionally design my stuff as if it might about in 1000 years time and I'm sure all other industrial designers do the same. I also know from personal experience that reliability of modern machinery is vastly better than it was 25 years ago and I've only to look at my motor cars, power tools, TV sets, Hi Fi, Computers etc to know this to be true. Some things such as lightbulbs intrinsically have a defined design life but this is irrelevant. Slade comes across as a typical muddled thinking academic with no knowledge of industry or the real world but he's got a book to push so who cares?. The problem quite simply that we have a (growing) cadre of incompetant designers and incompetant management. Best known example is Microsoft and Vista. Good particular case in point is that Apple ipod mention. The battery and screen problems were not intentional as Slade intimates. These were big bollocks dropped by useless mechanical and electronics people, reporting into a useless management.