A great article on the new challenges to product design. Some excerpts:
“Thus, whereas once the value of an object was self-evident, its utility communicated by the outer form, the value of today’s objects often comes in hidden, computerized form: the GPS unit in a luxury sedan, the motion sensors in a doll. Traditionally, the concept of “intuitive design” meant offering the user an immediate understanding of features and functionality; a toaster should look like a toaster. This immediate understanding is no longer possible, nor even desirable, by means of form alone. It’s not hardware vs. software but instead the object versus its story…. This is the new virtual nature of the thing.” And so we must improve the connection between industrial design and software interface, allowing the virtual story to augment – and in some cases supercede – the clarity of meaning once communicated by the object form itself.”
“The future of product design is, indeed, convergence. But it is convergence of a scale much broader than hardware and software working together; it is a convergence of information and object, of politics, ecology, and business, of human being and technology.”
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