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Juul: A case study in profits, addiction, and growth at all costs
What responsibility do designers have?
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.