Cool. Very cool. But this nothing to do with planned obsolescence.
this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2023
1461 points (97.7% liked)
Solarpunk technology
3099 readers
7 users here now
Technology for a Solar-Punk future.
Airships and hydroponic farms...
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Not this particular example, maybe, but the concept of a device remaining usable in failure runs counter to planned obsolescence.
Not necessarily, Apple for example makes interacting outside its ecosystem difficult on purpose for “calculated misery” iirc. It’s like when your boss cuts most of your hours instead of firing you. You don’t get optimal output or the benefit of transparency.
I see what you mean. I suppose the difference is the intent and the effect on the customer.
- Obsolescence: the device is poorly maintained, or designed to make using it past the desired (for shareholders) support date miserable.
- Grace: the product is designed to keep functioning past the point where normally it would cease to be of use to the customer.
Not necessarily, if the point of failure is the battery connect then this is able to continue until complete failure. It’s the opposite of one way planned obsolescence is done of putting the expected point of failure in a position where it is no longer operable at all or repairable
load more comments
(3 replies)
While I see the point they're trying to make, what this person is actually saying is complete nonsense.
Graceful degradation is not the opposite of planned obsolescence they're two completely different concepts with nothing to do with each other.
Graceful degradation is where a product degrades in such a way as to maintain at least some functionality for as long as possible.
Planned obsolescence is where an item is intentionally designed to fail in order to get you to buy the next version.
Completely different concepts.
The actual opposite of graceful degradation, is progressive enhancement.
Yes, you could have both ideas in the same product: it retains some functionality as it fails, but it fails in a planned way to ensure it's lifespan is short enough.
And oddly, the example of the flashlight isn’t even an example of either. Support for heterogeneous batteries is a feature, but it’s a stretch to call it “degradation”. It’s not like batteries fail randomly before they run out of juice.
The degradation in this case happens in the brain when you're trying to remember which type of batteries you need
I feel like the opposite is your multifunction refusing to scan because it needs ink.
vulgar degradation
Malicious degredation.
Graceful degradation is cool, but progressive enhancement is where it's really at. The difference is that instead of working around the lack of capabilities, you design simple and robust core system, and then improve around it based on available capabilities.
The proper term isn't graceful degradation, but fault tolerance.
It just describes how many core systems or components can fail before the device itself stops working.
For example, a jet will have multiple redundancies for almost all major systems which allows many of them to fail in the air without causing the plane to crash or force an emergency landing.
That's how you end up with Frankenstein scope creep.
No! Frankenstein is the name of the designer!
I learnt about graceful degradation in relation to escalators and how they compare to elevators/lifts. Basically escalators become stairs, whereas lifts become cages.
It's been one of my favourite design concepts, alongside hidden design (design which improves things without being apparent/in your face about it)
Also, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, it's unrelated to planned obsolescence as in it's not about designing things to last, but for a design to be functional even if there's some issue outside the control of the product design. You can get graceful degradation along with planned obsolescence, they're not mutually exclusive.
Reminds me of the differences in design cultures in different companies, though I heard it in relation to countries but idk if that was a stereotype or not. What I heard was about differences in design philosophies towards a similar goal of a good product: one company over engineered their stuff to last a long time, whereas the other company relied on redundancy by putting in a second of anything that was likely to fail in parallel to the original.
Sometimes escalators also become meat grinders though. Less graceful.
Just put your choice of meat on it, still graceful /s
Meat grinding is still functionality
Escalators are usually not safe to use when broken. So this is a good example of the idea in a spherical cow sort of way, but not practically.
I forgot to mention this was in relation to the lack of electricity, not breaking down
load more comments
(1 replies)
It's too bad that modern websites don't do graceful degradation anymore, let alone progressive enhancement.
My fleshlight works with a single AAA too 🙁
Don't put yourself down describing your D-Cell as a AAA
Thank you for the convenience
Thanks, Mitch.
view more: next ›