When designing products or services, it always comes down to making endless choices. An important asset when making these design decisions is lifecycle mapping. Lifecycles show each stage of a product or service, from birth to end of life. They let you check how your choices impact each stage of the lifecycle.

Product lifecycle

The classic way to map lifecycles of consumer products is by stating the various stages in a linear way (pictured here): the product is born at the design table, from which it goes into production. Afterwards it will be distributed to local stores, after which it will be purchased by a consumer. This consumer will make use of the product for a certain amount of time, and will finally dispose it. Sometimes repairments take place in between.

Of course social and technological trends from the past few years have had their impact on the way this classic scheme is built up: flexible production technologies such as laser cutting and 3D printing have allowed mass customization, giving consumers control over the design of the product. This effects the design and production stages of the life cycle. Furthermore, the web cuts away more and more local stores, enabling consumers to buy directly from the manufacturer through online webshops. This effects the distribution stage of the life cycle. Finally, think of cradle-to-cradle philosophies, turning this linear life cycle into an iterative loop. Nevertheless, this classic scheme still serves as a checkup when designing products.

Web lifecycle

Since Meta Products deal with both a physical and a web part, we should also take a look at web lifecycles (pictured here). An important aspect is its iterative character. This is because web platforms are never really finished, and agile development cycles make sure they stay up-to-date. Every one of these cycles contains a design, production and maintenance part. During these development cycles most web platforms stay active, and thus accessible for users, no matter whether people work on the backend side or not. This is because technology allows them to be updated seamlessly, resulting in zero percent downtime (theoretically).

For Meta Products it seems hard to incorporate such fundamentally different life cycles. While aiming for an integrated design approach, in which design activities for both physical and web part run in parallel, one should always be aware of the differences between the life cycles.

More about design approaches regarding Meta Products coming up in the next few months!