The Internet has greatly shortened product life cycles. Objects that stood the test of time offer lessons for today. So do designs that are intentionally ephemeral.Designing applications or websites means your designs don’t survive very long. Even if your product or app survives for a decade or more, there will be pressure to update the design every few years. This got me wondering how long designs of other things stay around. So here is a curated survey of how long our designs survive.Sticky NotesThe sticky note… a lab experiment gone awry(average lifespan: several hours) — The ubiquitous sticky note famously emerged from a lab experiment gone awry. Glue that wasn’t very sticky. Although sticky notes have been around for 45 years, the life of any single sticky note is probably measured in hours, not days. Nevertheless they have been a boon to brainstorming sessions and design sprints around the world. Their ephemeral nature is the key to their value. Don’t like what you wrote? Throw it out and write another one. Don’t think it belongs in this group? Move it to another. Sticky notes are the rare object that is as easily used digitally as their physical counterparts.Sand MandalaA finished sand mandala — Attribution: By the original uploader was Colonel Warden at English Wikipedia. — Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by SMasters using CommonsHelper., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16371236(in use for a few days or weeks) — A sand mandala is a symbolic representation of the universe made of colored sand. Creating them is a ceremonial act practiced by Tibetan monks and nuns and takes a few days to several weeks to create. Constructing one is an act of meditation requiring immense focus. After the mandala is finished, it is on view for only a short period of time. It is then destroyed in a dissolution ceremony meant to emphasize the impermanence of all things. Finally the sand is released into a river to transfer the spirits embodied in the mandala back into nature and the rest of the world.The first time I saw a video of this process, it shocked my world. The design was vivid, ornate, and beautiful. To see something so beautiful then destroyed by the people who made it jolted me. When swept into a pile, the vivid pigments quickly become a single gray mass. They are an amazing lesson about the nature of our lives and the world of things.WebsitesThe SF bay area edition of Craigslist.com barely changed from when it launched in 1995!(in use for 32 years) — The lifespan of your average website is about 2 years according to this post. Many sites are up for much longer but even those tend to need a refresh. Craigslist is the notable exception by still proudly sporting its original 1995 web 1.0 look and feel. I’ve worked on around 14 websites and apps. Of those, only 2 (7%) are live and still reflect the design I worked on. As dominant as the Internet is in today’s culture, “built to last” simply does not apply. Permanence is an anti-pattern.Thonet №14 ChairThe Thonet №14 Chair — Attribution: This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.(in use for 166 years) — Michael Thonet’s №14 Chair is a design classic. Simple and minimal. Introduced in 1859, It was the first chair to be mass produced but does not look like an industrial product. It is sometimes called the cafe chair due to its strong association with Parisian cafes. It was also sometimes referred to as the “lion-tamer chair”. You can see one in use in this post.BicycleThe ‘Flying Pigeon’ bicycle. Since the 1950s, over 500 million of these bikes have been produced and sold.(in use for 208 years) — The bicycle was invented in Germany and introduced in Paris around 1817. It is an amazing design object matched only by its engineering simplicity. The basic triangular geometry is minimal, strong, and still recognizable 200 years after being invented. There have been many improvements to the underlying technologies but the basic design remains.BuildingsThe Pantheon of Rome — Attribution: By Macrons — Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49683083The Pantheon in Rome was completed around 126 AD and has been in continuous use for almost 2000 years. It is widely considered the oldest building still in continuous use today. It began as a Roman temple. For the ceiling of the Parthenon, the Romans used cement mixed with ash which kept it light but strong. In the 7th century, it became a Christian church, the Basilica of St. Mary and the Martyrs. Adaptive reuse helped preserve it through centuries of war, weather, and regime changes.“Built to last” is a phrase sometimes used for things like old cars, buildings, and walls. It certainly applies to the pyramids and the Pantheon. It is much less frequently applied to objects today. It doen’t apply to the majority of objects we use in our daily lives. Consumer culture has driven us towards a throw away culture. This impacts the environment and our ability to build things to last.What does it take to build something that will last?This is a question asked by Louis Kahn, one of the great American architects. His Exeter Library is his answer. He wanted to pursue an architecture that would stand the test of time. He wanted to build something that would be monumental, strong and, like the pyramids, remain beautiful even in ruin.The interior of the Phillips Exeter Academy Library showing the raw, monumental cement building structure. Image source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ArchitecturePornCities(in use for 11,000 years) — The title of oldest continuously inhabited city is a subject of debate but Damascus is often credited as the oldest city still in use today. Jericho is older but was not in continuous use. Jerusalem & Athens both date back about 5000 years. From a design perspective, I marvel at Venice. It’s been in existence for over 1000 years. Its lasting beauty is amazing when you realize it was originally built to escape invaders on the mainland. The buildings, plazas, along with the canals and bridges that connect them are an amazing experience.The Bucentaur Returns to the Pier at the Doge’s Palace (c. 1730) by Canaletto — Attribution: Google Arts & Culture — mwEV7sO9uSFCpw, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22572210Mortar & PestleThe mortar & pestle — symbol of the pharmacist — Attribution: Image by Evan-Amos — Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12038229Beyond using our teeth, we’ve been grinding up food and other materials for about 37,000 years. The Mortar & Pestle was likely used initially to prepare grains and seeds to be more digestible but they had many other uses.They are still widely used today (guacamole anyone?) and have come to symbolize the pharmaceutical profession. As someone who cooks, I’m glad we figured out ground spices makes tastier dishes.Pyramids(built 4000 years ago) — The Great Pyramid of Giza was the tallest human-made structure in the world for 3800 years. I’m including pyramids for age reference only. How long they’ve been “in use” raises tricky questions. Should we measure use by the initial construction; as amazing ruins we only look at; or as a tomb for a dead pharaoh? They certainly were amazing feats of engineering.Bow & arrow / stone arrowheads(in use for 37,000–74,000 years) — These two designs are best taken as a connected journey. Arrows are an evolution of the stone-tipped spear. The bow & arrow was a leap in the efficiency and precision of throwing a spear. The innovation allowed hunters to remain farther away from their prey. The bow, arrow, and stone arrowhead built on the previous technology (an interesting concept known as “the adjacent possible” richly described by Steven Johnson in, ‘Where Good Ideas Come From’). Each element required an increase in precision and skill and offered advances over the previous tool. Older arrowheads were mostly focused on the general shape and cutting edges. Later versions were shaped to be more firmly lashed to wooden spears. As the first to enter the battlefield, U.S. Marines sometimes refer to themselves as, “the tip of the spear”. A 74,000 year old metaphor that is still understandable today.Hand axeIllustration of a hand axe.Imagine designing a product that was so good it was used for a million years. That’s 1,000,000 years! I remember seeing a hand axe in the “Tools: Extending Our Reach” exhibit at the Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum. I pondered it as a design object that dwarfed my career as a designer. The hand axe is a physical testament to both the slowness of early hominid evolution and the enduring utility of the object. The key innovation was the ever more skilled chipping away of flakes to create the cutting edge. Older versions of the axe are barely recognizable as being intentionally created. Later versions however, show two distinct functional requirements. The part that you held needed to be broad and round so as to be comfortable in the hand. While “the business end” had sharp, carefully-shaped cutting edges. I marvel at anything being used for this incomprehensible span of time.Final thoughts“If you want to go quickly, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together.” — African ProverbAs I wrote this post, I thought about the lessons of these very different objects. Here are my takeaways.Monumental acts take monumental teams — It takes incredible effort by many people to build something that has great impact and will last. Monumental achievements are never accomplished by one person. Each hand axe was likely created by one person but the concept we now know as the hand axe happened over a million years of usage. Venice is a singular experience. But building it required the work of many people over centuries.Adaptation is key to survival — The Pantheon survived in part because it is a space flexible in use. If your designs are to survive, you must hand them off to others. Loving caretakers are as important as passionate creators.Celebrate the ephemeral — Sand mandalas and sticky notes allow us to create something without becoming too attached to it. Having worked on lots of long-term projects, I’ve always found making dinner to be a positive antidote. Chopping vegetables can be meditative. A meal is finished in an hour or 2 and then you get to enjoy the creation. Simple acts are still creative.A graph showing how long these designs have been use. The hand axe was excluded because its million years of use reduces the other objects to tiny, barely visible bars.ReferenceTimeline of oldest human inventions — WikipediaOldest still standing buildings — WikipediaHow long designs survive was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

During an excavation, amidst the Patagonian winds and hard rock, a fossil began to turn green. It was an unexpected reaction: the adhesive applied to protect the bones, fragile after millions of years beneath the ice, had interacted with plant matter trapped in the rock’s cracks. This greenish hue earned the fossil the nickname Fiona, like the ogre from Shrek.But Fionais much more than a ogre-themed name. It is the first complete ichthyosaur ever excavated in Chile and, even more remarkably, the only known pregnant female from the Hauterivian — a stage of the Early Cretaceous dating back 131 million years. Her skeleton, discovered at the edge of the Tyndall Glacier in Torres del Paine National Park — an area increasingly exposed by glacial retreat — belongs to the species Myobradypterygius hauthali, originally described in Argentina from fragmentary remains.The discovery, led by Judith Pardo-Pérez, a researcher at the University of Magallanes and the Cabo de Hornos International Center (CHIC), and published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, offers an unprecedented glimpse into ancient marine life — from how these majestic reptiles reproduced to how they adapted to oceans vastly different from those of today.An Ichthyosaur Maternity Ward in Patagonia(Image Courtesy of Irene Viscor)So far, 88 ichthyosaurs have been found on the Tyndall Glacier. Most of them are adults and newborns. Two key facts stand out: food was abundant, and no other predators were competing with them.Fiona, who measures nearly 13 feet long, is still encased in five blocks of rock. Despite the challenge, she was transported to a local clinic, where CT scans allowed researchers to study her skull and body. Her species was identified thanks to one of her fins. “There’s no other like it in the world,” says Pardo-Pérez. The limbs were remarkably elongated, suggesting this animal was built for long-distance swimming.Inside her, there were more surprises. One of them was her stomach contents, which revealed what may have been her last meal: tiny fish vertebrae. But the most striking find was a fetus, about 20 inches long, already in a position to be born.“We believe these animals came to Magallanes — the southern tip of Chilean Patagonia — from time to time to give birth, because it was a safe refuge,” Pardo-Pérez says. “We don't know how long they stayed, but we do know that mortality was high during the first few days of life.”One of the big unanswered questions is where they went next, as there are no records of Myobradypterygius hauthali, apart from a piece of fin found in Argentina. The most abundant remains come from southern Germany, but those date back to the Jurassic period, meaning they’re older.Palaeontologist Erin Maxwell suggests, “In many modern ecosystems, species migrate to higher latitudes during the summer to take advantage of seasonally abundant resources and then move to lower latitudes in winter to avoid harsh conditions,” she explains. “We believe Mesozoic marine reptiles may have followed similar seasonal patterns.”Sea Dragon GraveyardThe environment where Fiona was discovered — dubbed the "sea dragon graveyard" — also has much to reveal.According to geologist Matthew Malkowski of the University of Texas at Austin, the Hauterivian age is particularly intriguing because it coincided with major planetary changes: the breakup of continents, intense volcanic episodes, and phenomena known as "oceanic anoxic events," during which vast areas of the ocean were depleted of dissolved oxygen for hundreds of thousands of years.One such poorly understood event, the Pharaonic Anoxic Event, occurred around 131 million years ago, near the end of the Hauterivian, and still raises questions about its true impact on marine life. “We don't have a firm grasp of how significant these events were for marine vertebrates, and geological records like that of the Tyndall Glacier allow us to explore the relationship between life, the environment, and Earth’s past conditions,” Malkowski notes.Evolution of IchthyosaursReconstruction of Fiona. (Image Courtesy of Mauricio Álvarez)Don't be misled by their body shape. “Ichthyosaurs are not related to dolphins,” clarifies Pardo-Pérez. Although their hydrodynamic silhouettes may look nearly identical, the former were marine reptiles, while the latter are mammals. This resemblance results from a phenomenon known as convergent evolution: when species from different lineages develop similar anatomical features to adapt to the same environment.Ichthyosaurs evolved from terrestrial reptiles that, in response to ecological and climatic changes, began spending more time in the water until they fully adapted to a marine lifestyle. However, they retained traces of their land-dwelling ancestry, such as a pair of hind flippers — absent in dolphins — passed down from their walking forebears. They lived and thrived in prehistoric oceans for about 180 million years, giving them ample time to refine a highly specialized body: their forelimbs and hindlimbs transformed into flippers; they developed a crescent-shaped tail for propulsion, a dorsal fin for stability, and a streamlined body to reduce drag in the water. Remarkably, like whales and dolphins, “ichthyosaurs had a thick layer of blubber as insulation to maintain a higher body temperature than the surrounding seawater and gave birth to live young, which meant they didn’t need to leave the water to reproduce,” explains Maxwell.Whales and dolphins also descend from land-dwelling ancestors, but their transition happened over a comparatively short evolutionary timespan, especially when measured against the long reign of the ichthyosaurs. “Their evolution hasn't had as much time as that of ichthyosaurs,” notes Pardo-Pérez. “And yet, they look so similar. That’s the wonderful thing about evolution.”Read More: Did a Swimming Reptile Predate the Dinosaurs?Fossils on the Verge of DisappearanceOne of the key factors behind the remarkable preservation of the fossils found in the Tyndall Glacier is the way they were buried. According to Malkowski, Fiona and her contemporaries were either trapped or swiftly covered by underwater landslides and turbidity currents — geological processes that led to their sudden entombment.But the good fortune that protected them for millions of years may now be running out. As the glacier retreats, exposing fossils that were once unreachable, those same remains are now vulnerable to wind, rain, and freeze-thaw cycles, which crack the surrounding rock. As vegetation takes hold, roots accelerate erosion and eventually conceal the fossils once again.“While climate change has allowed these fossils to be studied, continued warming will also eventually lead to their loss,” Maxwell warns. In Fiona’s story, scientists find not only a record of ancient life, but also a warning etched in stone and bone: what time reveals, climate can reclaim.Article SourcesOur writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:María de los Ángeles Orfila is a science journalist based in Montevideo, Uruguay, focusing on long-form storytelling. Her work has appeared in Discover Magazine, Science, National Geographic, among other outlets, and in leading Uruguayan publications such as El País and El Observador. She was a fellow in the 2023 Sharon Dunwoody Mentoring Program by The Open Notebook and often explores the intersections of science, culture, and Latin American identity.