Designing for technological obsolescence and discontinuous change: an evaluation of three successional electronic products

Product displacement has been occurring for many years and will continue to challenge the market as technological advances result in product obsolescence. While opportunities do exist to incorporate environmentally conscious design and engineering criteria into the product development process, much of the ultimate environmental success is dependent upon closing the product life cycle, through reuse (upgrade and/or repair), re-manufacture and recycling. This paper reports on the analysis and evaluation of three successional audio video home electronic products: the VHS Video Cassette Recorder (VCR), the Laser Disc Player (LD) and the Digital Video/Versatile Disc Player (DVD). The newly released DVD player has rendered the LD player obsolete and will soon render the VCR obsolete. This paper investigates potential environmental improvements to the DVD player through design strategies for upgrading a successional product and for reducing its end-of-life impact.