Purposive Drift

Creating Service Envy?

I met Chris Downs and Lavrans Lovlie a few years ago when I was a visiting lecturer on the Computer Related Design MA at the Royal College. At the time I thought they would go on to do something interesting and from time to time I visit their company site (Live/Work) to see what they are up to.

Dropping in today I saw something that reminded me of the Provos and their White Bicycle scheme in the 60s given a commercial twist:

"live|work has partnered with Streetcar as part of the strategy to shift from ownership to use; from product to service; from owning a car to simply having access to one. It seems like the ultimate design challenge, and to make this shift a service must rival the design quality of the product - we need to create service envy."

Take a look at their Streetcar study and the rest of the stuff on their site. I think they're on to something really important.