Breaking up with our products: encouraging electronics product dis-attachment to enable secondary uses

Durable goods can enter a state where they are not in use, nor have they been dispositioned (sold, gifted, recycled, donated or trashed). Instead, these goods are said to be in hibernation in people’s homes or storage areas. To explore this phenomenon further for smaller consumer electronic devices, we conducted in-depth video interviews with 50 people in the United States about their currently hibernating devices. We found that devices usually go into hibernation because a newer device was purchased, but the trade-in offer (if it even existed), or other disposition options, did not offer sufficient financial and/or social incentives to motivate the user to relinquish their older device. Secondly, we found that approaches to increase user attachment to a device (either at initial purchase or in order to extend product longevity) can later support the user’s justification for the hibernation. Overall, this research prompts the need to design for initial product attachment but later product dis-attachment, to ensure goods are first used for as long as possible but are then promptly handed off for secondary use.