#27: Joe Macleod on Designing Endings, Sustainable Consumption, And the EuroStack
From UX Fika Podcast by Anna Dahlström
April 8, 2026 · 1h 28m · Season 4 · Episode 3
About this episode
Joe Macleod discusses the importance of designing product and service endings for better user experience and sustainability.
In this episode of the UX Fika podcast, I sit down with Joe Macleod, founder of andEnd and pioneer of Endineering — a practice focused on designing how products, services, and relationships end. Joe has spent more than three decades working across digital, physical, and service design, including leading design at ustwo. Today, his work centres on something most organisations tend to avoid: what happens at the end. When a customer leaves. When a product is no longer used. Or when a service is no longer needed. We talk about why endings are often overlooked in design, and what it means when businesses focus almost entirely on acquisition, engagement, and retention, but not on letting go. Joe shares how poorly designed endings can create frustration, waste, and broken relationships, and why more thoughtful off-boarding can actually build trust, loyalty, and long-term value. We also dive into sustainability, consumption, and responsibility, and how designing better endings is not just a user experience challenge, but a business and societal one. Joe explains how Endineering helps organisations think beyond the moment of use, and consider the full lifecycle of what they create. Along…
People in this episode
Host: Anna Dahlström
Guest: Joe Macleod
Topics covered
- design endings
- sustainable consumption
- user experience
- business responsibility
- trust and loyalty
Keywords
- Endineering
- product lifecycle
- off-boarding
- customer experience
- sustainability
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: andEnd, ustwo
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