Book Excerpt: Ends. by Joe Macleod | UX Magazine

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Written By Joe Macleod

Historically, humanity maintained rich cultural and emotional rituals around endings—until the modern consumer boom severed that connection. This excerpt explores the historical roots of why we became so detached from product conclusions and why we urgently need to rebuild them.

• Historically, human societies held deeply structured, meaningful rituals for handling closures and endings.

• The rise of modern industrial consumerism deliberately severed these ending rituals to encourage endless, frictionless purchasing.

• Severing product offboarding from the consumer journey has created a profound lack of closure in modern customer experiences.

• Re-establishing clear, structured product endings is vital for fixing our relationship with consumption and waste.

Joe Macleod

Joe Macleod is founder of the worlds first customer ending business. A veteran of product development industry with decades of experience across service, digital and product sectors.

Head of Endineering at AndEnd. TEDx Speaker. Wired says “An energetic Englishman, Macleod advises companies on how to game out their endgames. Every product faces a cycle of endings. It's important to plan for each of them. Not all companies do." Fast Company says “Joe Macleod wants brands to focus on what happens to products at the end of their life cycle—not just for the environment but for the entire consumer experience.”

He is author of the Ends book, that iFixIt called “the best book about consumer e-waste”. And the new book –Endineering, that people are saying “defines and maps out a whole new sub-discipline of study”. The DoLectures consider the Endineering book one of the best business books of 2022.

https://www.andend.co
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