A few thoughts on design and the internet of things.
I‘ve given up designing business cards because I always struggle horrendously to come up with a decent job title for myself. I guess the obvious choice should be something along the lines of 3D Designer, but after spending four years learning about "good design" whilst studying Product Design, and another four years putting the process into practise whilst working as a lighting designer, the one thing that interested me most about 3D design was also one of the things that I’ve never really had the chance to properly explore; using design as a means of telling stories. Function was how well an object performed its intended role, form dealt with aesthetics and ergonomics. Both generally tangible and quantifiable qualities. But there was a third factor missing, something much more ephemeral and nuanced, which I think is perhaps best labelled as “narrative”. What is the object's story? What has it been designed to tell me? What is it trying to make me feel? How is it going to impact on my story?
A few thoughts on conceptual and critical design.
Some time after graduating I was introduced to the work of Dunne & Raby, who provided an answer by way of their unique creative process. Their approach places equal importance on traditional artistic creation methodologies as it does typical design techniques, quite often resulting in the form that an end product embodies taking a back seat to the story that it's telling. Anthony Dunne’s Hertzian Tales gives a great insight into their processes, and identifies several design techniques that deal with this intangible space, notably conceptual design; whereby a product is designed to “challenge preconceptions about how…products shape our lives”, and critical design; the process of using design to reflect cultural values and practises. Both of these techniques are historically common practises in the art world, but are perhaps less widely used in the design of real world products. As Dunne & Raby define it on their website;
“Critical Design uses speculative design proposals to challenge narrow assumptions, preconceptions and givens about the role products play in everyday life. It is more of an attitude than anything else, a position rather than a method. There are many people doing this who have never heard of the term critical design and who have their own way of describing what they do. Naming it Critical Design is simply a useful way of making this activity more visible and subject to discussion and debate.”
Particularly relevant to my own particular interests is a statement Dunne makes in Hertzian Tales regarding the critical design of electronic objects;
“One must move closer to the world of fine art because the design profession finds it difficult to accommodate such research”.
My ham-fisted translation of this is that the more experimental you want to be in the objects you make, the more questions you want to ask or reactions you want to provoke, the further from what might traditionally be termed a recognisable “product” you may risk becoming. This is entirely acceptable in the settings that Dunne & Raby’s works are typically shown, museums and galleries for instance, where we as viewers are preconditioned to welcome unknown experiences and thus more open to exploration and discovery. However, when you’re trying to design something with some level of scaled production in mind, where the end result is perhaps at least partly sales driven, you risk creating a product that consumers might struggle to relate to. Essentially if they don’t know what it is or what it does, if its affordances aren’t easy obvious, they may pass it by.
That said, the advent of Kickstarter might well end up providing a solution. The site seemingly offers a great platform for the kinds of products that Dunne & Raby identify, where the story is often as important as the object itself and where this narrative can be given equal weighting to factors such as form and function. That said, there's a danger that such products will end up lost in the ever increasing quantity of one-shot gadgets that Kickstarter seems to attract; the QVC style solutions to problems that often never really exist, the stocking filler injection moulded plastic tat, the never ending sea of iPhone accessories. Add to this a user base who may well soon grow tired of having to continually filter through the crap to find the good stuff and I wonder if the opportunity for beautiful, interesting, refined and well considered products to become successful will become harder and harder due to all the other noise.
Now i've happily avoided addressing these issues in my own projects so far by concentrating on creating one-offs that sit on the art side of the art/design fence; objects designed to provoke particular feelings or to tell site-specific stories. Objects designed to excite, intrigue and surprise. Generally things designed to catch people unawares and make them smile. I love making these things, and hope to keep getting the opportunities to do so, but at the back of my mind I’ve always been drawn back to the idea of making things for some level of production. For the longest time I’ve been trying to figure out a way to combine the two, to create “consumer goods” (airquotes) that reflect the things I love about creating tech-centric artworks; namely products that perform their tasks in magical, beautiful ways. Then about eighteen months ago a good friend introduced me to the concept of the Internet of Things by way of, among others, Mark Wieser’s The Computers for the 21st Century, Dan Hill’s Street As Platform, Bruce Sterling’s Shaping Things, Adam Greenfield’s Everyware and Ray Bradbury’s short story August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains. Here was an idea that ticked so many boxes that it utterly grabbed my attention.
A few thoughts on the Internet of Things.
The idea of imbuing physical objects and environments with digital layers presents massive opportunities for the kind of critical and conceptual design that I've mentioned above, so I’ve been following the IOT scene closely since being introduced to it. On the surface it seems to offer abundant possibilities for making Exciting New Stuff, particularly for me in the area of physical objects that have a sphere of influence extending beyond their tangible forms. Objects that can form interesting connections between themselves, between themselves and us, between us and the world around us. Objects that are aware of their surroundings, or that make visible the unseen, intangible information that surrounds us. Objects that can display physical changes based on digital inputs, or that use sensors and actuators to create entirely new methods of interaction. Potent, magical stuff, and all qualities that lend themselves very nicely to the kinds of design thinking that Dunne & Raby define. But how to apply the principles in practise, that’s the difficult question.
It’s been interesting watching the various IOT projects and (of late) products spring up, and it’s something that I’m excited to see more of over the coming years. Broadly speaking, and generally talking about projects with a physical component to them, I see these tending to fall into one of a handful of groups;
Firstly you have your utilities – your energy trackers, building control systems, environmental sensors and body monitors. They perform the quite frankly unenviable task of keeping us informed about exactly how wasteful, unhealthy and unfit we might be. It’s an important job, giving insights into the way we live that were previously impossible, but an incredibly hard one to do without either being so demanding of attention that the product becomes an annoyance, or alternatively being innocuous to the point that it’s ignored once the initial novelty has worn off. For products like these, the way that the information is conveyed to the user is key. For instance, using data-heavy, screen-based readouts that have to be regularly consulted in order remain useful presents a risk of becoming overly demanding of the user, which perhaps isn’t conducive in encouraging long term use. I guess the trick is to present the information in a way that’s passive enough to not offend, but active enough to remain relevant. Perhaps I’m missing the point though. Perhaps products like these are designed to only be needed for just as long as it takes them to reprogram us, at which point their job is done (e.g. Dan Hon’s tackling of Type 2 Diabetes with various body monitors), or they learn enough to be able to manage menial tasks for us completely, at which point becoming invisible (e.g. Nest).
The second group are your DIY systems, your geek lego. Products who share the common feature of requiring the user to undertake a degree of construction in order to achieve the end result of having a fully functional product. This group of objects are typically bought in kit form and are often designed around pre-existing platforms such as the (ever present) Arduino. They form a kind of toolkit, a menu from which an individual can pick and choose components in order to assemble objects that fulfil very specific tasks, often to a level of personalisation that mass-produced products struggle to achieve. All of a sudden the possibilities for building incredibly customised products are endless, provided you’ve passed the (not insubstantial) technological entry barriers. It's a hugely exciting new trend, but in my opinion there's a downside yet to be addressed. As these projects are typically born with the aim of performing one particular function, which may be the sole focus of their existence, the role of form can often become an afterthought. The user is given the impetus, tools and guidance to create their chosen item, but are frequently left with something so ramshackle and out of place that even Doc Brown would think twice about having it on display. It’ll do the job, but damn if it’ll look ugly sitting up there on your shelf. Now I’m not suggesting that everything needs to be beautiful in order to warrant making, but it seems like such a wasted opportunity when so much effort is put into making all these crazy inventions work, with comparatively less time spent on what they're actually going to look like and be made from. For me, it has to be a package deal. That said, I love this group of objects. I love the opportunities they give and the skills they teach. It’s like a gateway drug into product design, and is something that’s just not been possible up til this point in time.
The third group consists of your gadgets, gizmos and toys. These are what I've seen most of over the last year or so, and are what I imagine is the logical first steps into any new technology-centric movement. Test the waters, look for obvious applications, play around and see if anything fun results. I’ve loved seeing all the weird and wonderful crackpot projects being put out there, typically tech-heavy creations designed to perform single specific roles in brash, colourful ways (To be clear, I really don’t mean that in a negative way). At the same time, the growing media attention around IOT has meant that a lot of these projects have received global press and have often been presented as products rather than projects; “Let us introduce you to IOT, it’s going to change your life. Look – here’s a teapot that vibrates when you tweet it”. Understandably the reception to these kinds of posts tends to be mixed, with at best people becoming excited about the latent possibilities, but at worst simply dismissing it as just the next neckbearded hipster buzzword. Projects like these appeal to an established (and I suspect growing) market, typically people already au fait with the technologies being used and perhaps even building their own things. As I see more and more projects being transformed into saleable products I do wonder about their appeal outside of the established userbase. Perhaps that’ll come with time, or perhaps they’ll be successful simply by relying on the growing number of tech-savvy users who have an active interest in the field, but it’s a dangerous game to play when you’re financing a physical thing. But hey, that’s why everyone loves Kickstarter, right? That said, there's one trend that I've seen emerging from this group, and it's one that I have trouble with; products that flat out ignore the fact that most of us now have supercomputers in our pockets. Products that say “hey, I know you already have established, flexible, tried and tested methods of getting such and such info, or for interacting with such and such thing, but I’m going to ignore all that and force you to do it my way, which to be honest probably isn't quite as easy. But I'm new and shiny and I have a good promo video and you want me. Lalalaaaa”. That’s all well and good if the alternative you’re suggesting offers a genuine improvement over the existing method (something other than just the novelty of being new) but more often than not it simply doesn’t, with a degree of usability becoming lost in the translation from digital to physical. What may be perfectly serviceable as a digital product becomes convoluted and unwieldy when made physical. A simple solution perhaps; if the information you’re trying to make physical is to make sense, it needs to make sense to make it physical in the first place.
So how to go forward? Well, I'm by no means suggesting I have the answer, but I have the beginnings of a checklist that I'm planning to work to in order to try to avoid the pitfalls;
1. Make it clever. Whatever it is you want to make, it should be clear and confident in what it does and how it does it. It should perform its job in such a way that enhances the life of its owner, in whatever small way possible. These devices don’t all need to change the world, but they should definitely try to make it a bit more interesting.
2. Make it kind. Your product should be sympathetic to the way that it fits into established ways of living, and not cause unnecessary friction due to ego or poor planning. It should be mindful of what it asks of us, when it asks it, and how it asks it.
3. Make it last. Where appropriate it should be designed with long-term use in mind, doing whatever it can remain useful and relevant for as long as possible (and therefore out of landfill). If it is intended for scaled manufacture, sustainable processes should be used where appropriate (eg cradle to cradle).
4. Make it Poppins. It should be the absolute perfect combination of beautiful, useful and magical. If it has a story to tell, it needs to tell it well (/Berg).
5. Make it out of the good stuff. Make careful, considered choices when looking at materials and production methods. The days of mass production being the only method of getting something made are over, with the increasing availability and fidelity of small-batch manufacturing processes. As such, there’s no excuse for automatically defaulting to injection moulded plastic with horrendous carbon footprints.
6. Make it well. People value craftsmanship in the objects they bring into their lives. Add to this the fact that there seems to be a bit of a resurgence at the moment for products that celebrate individual artistry (which I imagine is a reaction against a sustained period of identical, mass produced consumer goods), and you have a great opportunity to create objects that really reflect the skill and care involved in the process of making things.
7. Make it intuitive. You don’t want your users to have to struggle unnecessarily with your product in order to reap its benefits. If you’re asking them to change the way they do things, you’ve got to do it in such a careful, delicate way in order to avoid becoming an aggravation.
8. Make it targeted. As more and more IOT products are released, it’s going to become increasingly important to carefully define your market. The way I see it, there are currently two ways to approach this. On one hand, you could design for an already established market, which in this case is perhaps your home hackers and tech-savvy, gadget loving impulse buyers. This seems to be the popular choice, which can either be seen as a positive (other people are already successfully doing it), or a negative (an increasingly saturated market with no proven long term buying history). On the other hand, perhaps you could look to a different market, maybe one that’s already established in a different sector of design. They’re out there, the trick is knowing where to focus.
That's my list so far, although I'm sure it's going to go through a fair amount of change before I have anything to show for it. A start is a start though.
So to conclude this giant, rambling post. In my opinion IOT should perhaps best be seen as an umbrella term for quite a few very different incarnations of the idea of the “connected object”. Some do the boring jobs, some do the flashy stuff. The important thing is that if we get to a point where these devices utterly surround us, they work together (or at least acknowledge each others existence) and don’t overwhelm us. I think we should perhaps be looking at how the principles of IOT can be softened and refined to the point that the products fit naturally within peoples existing lives, gently improving things in beautiful, interesting and colourful ways. Because at the end of the day if IOT has one really inspiring quality, it’s the ability to make people’s day to day lives that little bit more magical.
So that’s what I’m attempting to do this year, with my own projects and hopefully with other peoples, if suitable opportunities come along. I’m currently actively looking to get involved in both products and installations, so if you have something in mind, or even just fancy chatting about any of this stuff, do drop me a line.
jacobvanloon
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izzy806
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