Week 15 - Final Thoughts
Emerging Opportunities in Design
Wearables
Wearables came on strong in 2017 as people tried smart watches and Fitbits and Google Glass. There seems to be an adjustment period underway right now as the costs and benefits of wearables are tested and adjusted across multiple industries from health care to entertainment and infotainment. Designer Billie Whitehouse predicts an expansion of wearables into true articles of clothing from GPS-embedded jackets to sports jerseys that transmit the sensations experienced by professional athletes to their fans. Among her most intriguing designs is Nadix, a line of yoga apparel that guides wearers into poses by applying vibration to different parts of the body. In addition to yoga there are opportunities here in fields like healthcare rehabilitation and even workplace safety, where your apparel might remind you to lift with your legs and not your back (Anderson, 2018). For wearables to become mainstream, designers have several of problems to solve. Initially most wearables were extensions of the wearer’s smart phone, but future iterations will need to shed the intermediary and officially join the Internet of Things. Practical concerns like batteries and circuits that can withstand washing and visual unobtrusiveness are ripe for design solutions as are the apps that will inevitably be necessary to interface with the technology. The lessons designers can learn from one early wearable, Google Glass, are more related to privacy than functionality although Glass too was dependent on the proximity of a smartphone. Future designers must find ways to address the discomfort many people experienced around people who wore Glass due to the possibility that the wearer might be video recording. My personal suspicion is that people have grown far more accustomed to constant recording over the last few years. The American Library Association (2014) predicts that the emergence of Internet of Things will gradually erode public resistance to the sharing of data and reframe assumptions about privacy as will pressure to participate in another emerging technology—Augmented reality.
Virtual Reality
Though several major vendors now produce Virtual Reality or (VR) equipment, there is still a strong public perception that this is a gaming technology exclusively. There is a design void to be filled here in terms of less obtrusive equipment to “experience design” in the form of conceiving and coding experiences in the realms of storytelling (motion picture and publishing), education, digital collection development in libraries and museums and even workplace training scenarios (Newsman, 2018). As the American Library Association (2017) notes “Virtual reality could become an important tool for users to connect with and experience cultural events, institutions, and collections in virtual reality or 360-degree video”. Libraries are consequently encouraged to make VR technologies publicly available as part of their traditional role as points of public exposure to new technologies though there is a concern about equitable access to content, and issues that might addressed by digital rights management rather than design.
(Google Glass and Cardboard--new possibilities for AR and VR) Photo Credit: Adric Holmes
Voice control
As it becomes ubiquitous via digital assistants like Alexa and Siri, and adopters become comfortable speaking aloud to objects, voice control may be passing from emerging technology to accepted technology in record time, maybe because sci-fi books and movies have played a role in building expectations and predictions for what speech recognition could look like in our world. Early and even contemporary efforts at voice control have been inelegant, sometimes comically, suggested an ocean of design opportunities from better operational code to microphones and noise-cancelling features. Essentially any device that requires human interaction to operate is open to design adaptations that accommodate voice control. Voice control holds the promise of safer and more accessible machines with some special benefits for people with disabilities. Designers with a preference for social responsibility might see adaptive design as a way to improve lives if not planets. In late 2017, Amazon announced new voice-activated tools for the workplace, hoping that verbal commands such as, “Alexa, print my spreadsheet,” will expand to common office tasks. Microsoft’s Cortana has similarly begun to manage some of the more onerous office tasks such as: scheduling meetings, recording meeting minutes, and making travel arrangements (van der Velde, 2018).
Biodesign
Personally, I am most excited by emerging opportunities in biodesign which fuses design with biotechnology, integrating design with biological systems to achieve better ecological outcomes. This once and still includes bioengineered crops and hydroponics, animal breeding programs and living roofs. But now there is so much more. For better or for worse, CRISPR has made genetic design possible far beyond what can be achieved through selective breeding, and just last week scientists in Israel produced a rudimentary heart from human tissue through a 3-D printing process (Tangermann, 2019). Eskilson (2012, p. 259) describes how the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has been instrumental in promoting modern design in the United States since it was founded in New York City in 1929. To promote and expand public understanding of biodesign, MoMa has recently published Biodesign: Nature+Science+Creativity by William Meyers which summarizes the biodesign concept “Biodesign is the next step beyond biology-inspired approaches to design and fabrication. Unlike biomimicry or the popular but vague "green design," biodesign refers to the incorporation of living organisms as essential components in design, enhancing the function of the finished work.”The Rhode Island School of Design and The New Institute at Rotterdam Netherlands have staged biodesign exhibits (biodesign, 2018).
(DNA gel electrophoresis -- one application of biodesign) Photo Credit: Aidan Holmes
Resources:
Anderson, K. (2018). Wearable X: Designing a future of technology that fits - SiliconANGLE. [online] SiliconANGLE. Available at: https://siliconangle.com/2018/09/21/wearable-x-designing-future-technology-fits-cubenyc [Accessed 28 Apr. 2019].
biodesign. (2018). Bioesign : Nature + Science + Creativity. [online] Available at: https://www.biology-design.com/ [Accessed 28 Apr. 2019].
Eskilson, S. J. (2012). Graphic design : a new history. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Newsman, B. (2018). Google Glass – The Return Of Google Glass, Now With AI – Hashtag Highways. [online] Hashtaghighways.com. Available at: https://hashtaghighways.com/2018/08/01/google-glass-is-backnow-with-artificial-intelligence/ [Accessed 28 Apr. 2019].
“Privacy Shifting”, American Library Association, September 15, 2014.
http://www.ala.org/tools/future/trends/privacy (Accessed April 23, 2019)
Document ID: ee2ed2b5-7aa7-a314-4979-961920fa9191
Tangermann, V. (2019). Researchers Just 3D Printed The First-Ever Complete Heart Using Human Tissue. [online] ScienceAlert. Available at: https://www.sciencealert.com/researchers-have-just-3d-printed-a-mini-heart-using-human-tissue [Accessed 28 Apr. 2019].
van der Velde, N. (2018). A Complete Speech Recognition Technology Overview. [online] Globalme. Available at: https://www.globalme.net/blog/the-present-future-of-speech-recognition [Accessed 28 Apr. 2019].
"Virtual Reality", American Library Association, June 16, 2017.
http://www.ala.org/tools/future/trends/virtualreality (Accessed April 23, 2019)
Document ID: fa6f3017-b2dd-fa34-fd8d-3f424c786c31









