When you repair a product with your own hands, you open a window. You see how the technology works, learn practical skills, and gain independence from consumer society. But these benefits only materialize if the product is designed for repair. Sadly, many products are too hard to understand, disassemble, and modify, and this makes it easy to imagine an unstoppable negative trend.

So let’s take a draadkar as a counterexample. This popular toy from Southern Africa is built from stiff wires, curved and joined into a steerable chassis resembling an automobile. Different styles originate in different locations, but all can be customized with decorations like glass beads or mechanical oddments. Unlike a plastic toy, which rots in the unrelenting sun, the metal does not turn brittle. And if the wire car suffers an impact, it can be pulled back into shape, with the parent and child carrying out the repair together.

A draadkar from Pretoria (South Africa). Photo credit: Christopher Tidy

My own fascination with the aging of machinery began with a clump of iron dust. When I was nine years old, I dragged a magnet through the gutter, collected some gray-brown powder, and reasoned that this wore off the passing vehicles. Shortly after, I found a broken school bell and repaired it with a vibratory mechanism salvaged from a fuel pump. Fixing a carburetor came next, which led to a farm engine, a hydraulic excavator, and eventually an engineering degree from Cambridge.

Last fall, I repaired the timer knob from my neighbor’s microwave oven. Reassembling the plastic fragments was akin to gluing a broken potato chip back together, but I succeeded on the fourth try. I then reinforced the fragile hub with a length of steel pipe. Given the difficulty of the repair, other people might have rationalized the waste with thoughts of recycling and thrown away the whole microwave. But this makes as little environmental sense as tearing down a house with a shattered window.

German students developing ideas for repairable products. Photo credit: Christopher Tidy

We should not recycle things unnecessarily, because this is energy intensive and often yields poorer materials. Instead, if we repair more and waste less, we can make our products more compatible with nature. We can benefit from slow-growing forests which produce more durable timber, and reduce the need for the hazardous open fires and acid baths of informal electronics recycling centers like Seelampur, India.

Today, design for repair involves a kaleidoscope of different layers, and it requires an understanding of the complex interactions between humans and technologies. You can now make a digital model of a broken coffee percolator knob using free software, send it abroad for 3D printing, and get the replacement delivered to your door. But if you buy a new electric heater, it will not have the beguiling style or replaceable elements of its locally built iron-and-enamel forerunners. Some things progress, while others regress.

An early electric heater by Carron Company of Scotland. Photo credit: Christopher Tidy

Giving people the ability to repair a possession is empowering, and there are growing support networks available. The Repair Café movement encourages people to share their skills. This could involve teaching someone how to replace a laptop charging port, for example. The potential benefit is huge: if a new computer becomes unnecessary, the small repair saves a quarter of a ton of carbon dioxide emissions – the equivalent of a return flight from London to Geneva. But what we now need is support for the product designer.

A product succeeds as a whole, but fails as the sum of its parts. Most people buy something which works well or looks good – they judge the end result without delving into the details. But a future defect like a weak spring or corroded battery might mean that the parts no longer add up correctly, and the product must be repaired or thrown away.

A 3D-printed knob for a General Electric coffee percolator. Photo credit: Christopher Tidy

This means that the designer needs to consider both the whole and the details, new parts and worn parts, and to move repeatedly between different points of view. Too heavy a focus on function, and he may neglect the aesthetics and ergonomics. Too keen an eye for profit, and she may forget the environmental and societal aspects. As a field of engineering, design for repair lacks a guiding structure, which makes it doubly hard to find a sound balance. It is this void which has occupied my thoughts for at least a decade.

As a leader of sustainable design-and-build projects for German and Russian engineering students, and now as an independent engineer in South Africa, I have often dumpster dived to learn lessons about repair. Over the years, I have developed a strong conviction that making tough, repairable products is feasible today. If you doubt this, take a look at handheld power tools: spare parts for a good electric drill can be identified using an exploded diagram and ordered for many years after the model goes out of production.

An electric hammer drill disassembled by the author. Photo credit: Christopher Tidy

Because there are countless technical nuances, design for repair needs a method which focuses on goals rather than details. Logically, the method must revolve around three objectives. First, the product should be hard to break. Second, it needs to be easy to repair when something does go wrong. Third, the owner must want to fix it instead of buying another.

But what does this mean when it comes to a tangible design, or a purchasing decision? Can these three fundamental pillars be expanded into a broadly applicable checklist? Drawing upon technical books, failure examples, and many discussions, I have filled notebooks with ideas and categorized them in a web of colorful keywords, arrows, and circles. The end result is the ROBUST method, a design-for-repair framework with a memorable six-point acronym:

Rugged: The product must not break easily. The shapes and materials used for the parts should make them strong enough for normal use and likely misuse. Gradual processes like wear and corrosion should only have detrimental effects after many years. Materials and finishes which age gracefully are beneficial, as these ensure lasting visual appeal.

Open: The owner must be able to open the product quickly using simple tools in order to diagnose faults and replace parts. As far as possible, the parts should be standardized and widely available, and the repair instructions and internal software code freely shared. The materials should be open to repair by techniques like welding, gluing or riveting, and open to recycling too.

Balanced: The designer must spend the budget in the right places. All the parts should have a similar life expectancy without any notable weak points. The most heavily used and abused parts should be strengthened, and pointless features eliminated. In addition, a versatile product is less vulnerable to obsolescence and more likely to have a long life.

Useful: The owner needs to always see the value in the product, and not just when it is brand new. Ideally, it should do a job better, faster or more easily than the alternatives, and the difference should make the product striking. It should not be awkward or frustrating in any way.

Satisfying: When a product is fun, the owner comes to love it, and is more inclined to make the effort needed to carry out a repair. The looks, sounds and motions of a machine can be designed to fascinate. Watching and using the product then becomes a satisfying ritual, and the owner comes back for more.

Transformative: A product which is designed, built and owned by people who believe in repair can sow an influential seed. Repair provides an opportunity to learn skills and think about sustainability. The product can also serve as a talking point, inspiring people to buy for the long term and share their repair stories.

The ROBUST method provides a design-for-repair checklist. Photo credit: Christopher Tidy

It is now time for others to test this method in the realization of their designs, seeking their own inspiration along the way. The attitudes and technologies needed to create outstanding repairable products already exist – they just need to be cultivated and organized. This is why the ROBUST method isn’t the final destination. It’s a tool kit for the journey, giving designers and customers a framework to structure and test their ideas.

Just as curious people never stop learning, design is an endlessly iterative pursuit, and every small change which makes a product endure and conserve resources is worthwhile. We just need to disturb the status quo, deliberately and thoughtfully, to make our possessions more sustainable. Design by design, purchase by purchase, and repair by repair. There has never been a better time.

Christopher Tidy

Trained as an engineer, Christopher Tidy is a repairability advocate based in South Africa. He is the creator of the ROBUST method, a simple system for helping designers build more fixable products. To learn more about his work, visit designforrepair.com