Member-only story

Juul: A case study in profits, addiction, and growth at all costs

What responsibility do designers have?

Meghan Wenzel
UX Collective
8 min readSep 8, 2021
New York Attorney General Letitia James displays Juul ads that critics believe were aimed at young people.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/05/health/juul-vaping-fda.html

This Thursday, September 9th, marks the deadline for the FDA to decide which vaping products can stay on the market. The agency needs to determine if Juul’s products have enough public health benefit to justify their widespread use among teens. While Juul’s founders envisioned Juul as a safer alternative for smokers than combustible cigarettes, their sleek design, ease of use, fruity flavors, and edgy marketing made them incredibly popular with teenagers who had never smoked before.

Juul: A case study in the power of Design

Creating a luxury good

In the early 2000s, e-cigarettes emerged as an alternative to cigarettes by delivering the nicotine smokers crave without the carcinogens involved in combustible cigarettes. However e-cigarettes didn’t gain widespread appeal until Juul hit the scene in 2015.

Founded by two graduates of Stanford’s esteemed d.school, Adam Bowen and James Monsees, Juul understood the power of Design. Existing e-cigarettes on the market were cheap and basic, churned out from a variety of factories in China, and Bowen and Monsees realized that thoughtful design could be a massive differentiator.

Create an account to read the full story.

The author made this story available to Medium members only.
If you’re new to Medium, create a new account to read this story on us.

Or, continue in mobile web

Already have an account? Sign in

Published in UX Collective

We believe designers are thinkers as much as they are makers. Curated stories on UX, Visual & Product Design. https://linktr.ee/uxc

Written by Meghan Wenzel

UX Researcher and Strategist — “It’s not the story you tell that matters, but the one others remember and repeat”

No responses yet

What are your thoughts?