Don Norman coined the term "User Experience."
Then he spent his later career arguing that designers have been solving the wrong problems.
In Design for a Better World (2023), he lays out a framework called Circular Design. Here's the core of it:
The world runs on a linear model:
Take raw materials → Make products → Discard as waste.
Waste happens at every stage. Not just at the end.
Half of all waste is produced before a product is even manufactured: in mining, refining, and transportation alone.
The materials we design with take 20 to 500 years to biodegrade.
More than 1 million species are now threatened with extinction.
84% of global energy still comes from fossil fuels.
These are not environmental stats. These are design consequences.
Norman defines three types of planned obsolescence:
→ Breakdown: components fused so repair is impossible
→ Progress: new standards that make old products incompatible
→ Fashion: cosmetic changes that make the old feel outdated
And three principles of circular design to counter them:
→ Treat waste and pollution as design flaws
→ Design products to last, to be repaired, to be reused
→ Design so end-of-life materials regenerate, not degrade
These principles apply to digital products:
An app that drops OS support to push upgrades ?
That's planned obsolescence through progress.
A redesign that forces users to relearn everything ?
That's the digital equivalent of a glued-together coffee cup.
Features that pile up until the only fix is a full rebuild ?
That's take-make-waste applied to software.
It is too late to stop the damage, but it is not too late to slow it down and reverse its progress.
Full article covering the complete framework, the recycling myth, and how circular design applies to UX.
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