“Whatever they are doing, whatever they are buying, I want consumers to ask one question,” says Joe Macleod: “I want them to ask how this ends.” For the organisations manufacturing and marketing the products we consume, the question is slightly different: “I want them to ask how should this end?” These two questions, which form the thematic bedrock of Macleod’s latest title, ‘Endineering’, focus on “how we can improve what we are making, and how we can go about reclaiming the materials and have better brand equity relationships so that we can get over the massive and wasteful problems we have in consumerism today”.
While he is specifically talking about the consumer lifecycle of digital devices, these questions could apply to almost any consumer experience, says Macleod. He’s identified a cycle that deteriorates from the life-affirming experience of opening the box of your new smartphone to that “feeling of abandonment after your contract is up, drifting...