從產品計劃性拋棄看工業設計職業化發展

The Professionalism Development of Industrial Design within the Scope of Planned Obsolescence

上世紀初，通用汽車提出的產品計劃性拋棄，該策略至今為企業廣泛采用。當前，在講求品質、關懷環境、反思消費的普遍社會共識中，產品的計劃性拋棄與工業設計所推崇的服務社會價值，格格不入。行業實踐與社會責任間的衝突，造成設計師職業倫理的困擾。本研究基於工業設計發展歷程和計劃性拋棄策略相關文獻資料，分析經由工業設計手段造就計劃性拋棄策略的社會文化和消費心理，進而，探討該策略對工業設計職業化發展的影響。旨在當前技術和文化語境下，本研究為工業設計的職業倫理，提供不同視角的認識，具體得到以下結論：1. 計劃性拋棄是市場經濟中，企業基于利潤需要而在各個層面達成共識的經營機制，樣式更替是該策略典型模式，正是產品樣式更替的需要促成社會分工，進而造就工業設計職業化。2. 計劃性拋棄策略關聯產品開發的方方面面，設計師在與不同領域專家的協作中，造就了跨領域的行業職能。3. 計劃性拋棄對消費者和市場的關注，促成了當前工業設計教學和實踐中，重視用戶需求的基本職業觀念，實現設計倫理服務民眾生活的社會理想。

Planned obsolescence was proposed by GM in the last century and has been widely used since then. This strategy is incompatible with today’s common industrial design ethics ideas of quality-oriented, environment-concerned and business-reflected concepts. Designers’ confusion about occupational ethics would arise from conflicts between the practice of industrial design industry and the social responsibility. Based on the literature materials concerning industrial design and planned obsolescence, the study analyzed the social culture and consumer psychology upon planned obsolescence brought by the means of industrial design, and thus to probe into the influence of this strategy on the professional development of industrial design. The study, centering on planned obsolescence, and provides our insights from different perspective towards ethics of industrial designer under the current technical and cultural context, and comes to the conclusions as followed: 1. Planned obsolescence is an operational mechanism that an enterprise would reach a consensus in all aspects based on the profit-based demands in the market economy. The typical pattern of this strategy is the style replacement. It is nothing else than the needs of product style replacement that facilitates the social division of labor and then forms the industrial design professionalism. 2. Planned obsolescence is associated with every aspect of product development. Interdisciplinary cognition about industrial design had been set up under collaboration between designers and experts from different fields. 3. With the focus on the consumers and the market, planned obsolescence enables the basic occupation concept of attention-to-user needs in the current industrial design teaching and practice, and thus to realize the vision of design ethics serving people’s live.