What are the design challenges for an appliance brand? And how complex is it to adopt a circular economy and how can it be done successfully? On the occasion of Miele’s 125th anniversary, we talk to Andreas Enslin, Vice President of Design.
Interview by Thomas Wagner
Mr Enslin, how does industrial design apply to Miele – and what is so special about designing household appliances?
Andreas Enslin: A lot of things are lumped together under the umbrella term “design”. What industrial design does, and what we do at Miele, is to build a bridge between the user, the technology and the brand. You can think of them as islands with connections between them – and for a brand the link has to be strong. A simple wooden bridge won’t do.
Design ultimately addresses the fact that people don’t deal well with complexity. We make quick and usually emotional decisions, but it takes us a long time to fully grasp things cognitively. The role of industrial design is to bring together the technical, the professional and the physical with the emotional, the impulsive and the sensual – everything that makes us human. That’s the bridge I’m talking about.
So this bridge between design and your brand has a lot of arches?
Andreas Enslin: Through design, we make a promise and give our brand character and personality. A brand isn’t just a logo. What we achieve through design is also a form of visual communication: when we make decisions, we get a reaction from our customers, which is great and drives identification. But it goes much further than that. It’s about trust in the brand – and the product has to live up to that trust. That includes appearance, usability – the user experience and user interface – and the response to the product, meeting expectations throughout the lifecycle. When people talk about quality, they don’t want wobbly knobs.
Kitchen, laundry, professional vacuum cleaners: how do you bring the different areas of your business together under the same design umbrella?
Andreas Enslin: Connecting the dots is crucial. You can’t build a consistent brand if you don’t deliver consistent performance. To achieve this, technology, design and communication must be of the highest quality – user experience, product and brand communication must be aligned.
So the brand has to be communicated convincingly in all its facets?
Andreas Enslin: We have just launched a new washing machine – with a new interface and user experience. The font used is an in-house typeface that we’ve designed because it’s important how well it reads at different sizes and in different languages. Finnish, for example, takes up a lot of space on the screen. Many languages have similar challenges. As a company, we can’t develop a separate product for each regional market, it wouldn’t be practical. On the other hand, there isn’t one global product that works equally well everywhere. That’s why we rely on diversity.
You recently presented the concept behind the “Vooper” vacuum cleaner at the IFA in Berlin. It’s modular and a first step towards a circular product. How important is this issue to you and what is special about the study behind the concept?
Andreas Enslin: We regularly develop future scenarios with a forecast period of around ten years to identify and manage developments. We started the study for the Vooper three years ago. The issue of sustainability will continue to grow. We will see a lot of activity, questions and demands in this area. And I must admit, I was worried: What does this mean for us in terms of design and especially for Miele in the premium segment? Is it even possible to use recycled materials without paints and varnishes? I’m happy to say that the answer is yes, it is possible. For Miele, there are two aspects to this. Internally: Do I need it, do I want it, can I do it? Do we have the necessary expertise on board? And externally: The product may be great, but it only makes sense to produce it if there are enough customers willing to accept the change and buy it.
Shouldn’t Miele’s quality-oriented customers be the ones to support such transformation processes?
Andreas Enslin: We also conducted a study on this and were pleased to find that many Miele customers are on board. But the study also shows that it’s not just about recycling, it’s about circularity – and the business model is still very new. It doesn’t just mean a completely different design. More importantly, the user has to accept the feeling of no longer owning the device. I always use the analogy of bottled water: You can drink the water, but you have to return the empty bottles.
Utility instead of ownership.
Andreas Enslin: Making this attractive is the task of design. But to move from a linear to a circular economy, I also need partners for the return of materials.
How long will such a transformation process take for household appliances?
Andreas Enslin: We’re already doing well in Europe – and I think we’re doing very well in Germany. There are many people driving the process forward. A lot is already being done in terms of disposal, but for yesterday’s products. That’s a key issue. A different construction method requires a completely different approach to disposal than we have today. The partners are crucial. We don’t want to set up collection points ourselves and bring back used vacuum cleaners by truck – that’s completely impractical in terms of the circular economy. So two things have to happen at the same time: I have to make the product circular, and the return to the cycle has to work. We cannot do it alone.
Are you getting enough support from politics?
Andreas Enslin: We could put it this way: we would like to see regulations that are compatible across countries. That would be a very good idea in the EU.
Are better maintenance and repairability steps along the way?
Andreas Enslin: A good example of this is material separation. At Miele, we used to use around 2,000 different types of plastic. By replacing many of the special materials with higher-quality, more expensive ones, we have now reduced this to just 300 types of plastic. That’s a first step in the right direction.
Electronics have a limited service life, usually not on the side of the semiconductor components, but on the side of the capacitors and resistors. The question is: Does it make sense to design electronics to last 100 years and not participate in technological progress? What we do – and what we’ve learnt from a recycling project in the Netherlands – is to take the electronics apart and refurbish them. This has been very well received if we, as a manufacturer, do it with the appropriate trust.
When can I buy a refurbished machine from Miele?
Andreas Enslin: In fact, you can already. In the pilot project I mentioned in the Netherlands, we put refurbished equipment back on the market. Sometimes the longevity of our products is an obstacle. Because of changing regulations, we are not allowed to put certain items back on the market. But it’s an opportunity to design products from the outset so that components can be replaced.
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About the Author
Thomas Wagner was born in 1955 and studied German and Philosophy in Heidelberg and Brighton (Sussex). While still a student, he began working as an art critic and freelance journalist. From 1986 he wrote for the art section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, where he was chief editor for visual arts and design from 1991 to 2007. He then continued to work as a freelance author, art critic and columnist. Wagner published an online magazine for Stylepark and was editor of the German Design Council’s design report magazine. He is currently online journalist for ndion. Wagner has also taught as a visiting, guest and honorary professor and was a founding member of the DGTF (German Society for Design Theory and Research). He has served on numerous juries and continues to be active in the field.
