Designing for physical versus digital products
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The document discusses the evolving roles of physical and digital designers as the boundaries between their work blur with the integration of technology and design. Designers must now consider various factors including user interaction, context, and device connectivity to create products that are both functional and aesthetically pleasing. Furthermore, it emphasizes the importance of collaboration across disciplines and adapting design approaches to meet the changing landscape of product development.
Designing for physical versus digital products
- 1. Designing for physical versus digital products Chui Chui Tan @ChuiSquared http://www.flickr.com/photos/dorena-wm/4486051522/
- 2. For now, we can broadly group designers into physical and digital Designers designers. ❤ ❤ Physical products Digital products
- 3. I was a physical product designers when I worked with Panasonic designing the physical part of their stereo sets. Now, I’m a digital designer because most of my work is digital based. However, such clear categorisation is no longer valid. Physical product designer Digital product designer
- 4. This is what physical product designers used to design - focused on product’s form, shape, material, how parts attach together. 4
- 5. This is what physical designers have been designing in recent years - physical products now have to incorporate with digital interface or with software. 5
- 6. Years ago, digital designers used to design only for desktop - focused only on the website, the IA (information architecture), the images, the copy and content.
- 7. Now, we are designing more and more for mobile....
- 8. ... and for tablets. Hence, we’ve to consider devices’ sizes, resolution, the interaction these devices support, the context of use of these devices - a lot about the physical devices.
- 9. The trend: both digital and physical are combining and interlinking. No more cutting lines between the two. http://www.flickr.com/photos/wecand/4109772863/
- 10. Network Connectivity Context-awareness Data Sensors Multipurpose Dan Saffer Author of ‘Designing Devices’ Updatability Dan Saffer listed the characteristics which differentiate the devices of today from previous eras.
- 11. Devices now are serving as the Internet’s interface to the physical world. “The number of things connected to the Internet has already exceeded the number of people on earth.” Cisco
- 12. Nabaztag, a Internet-enabled electronic rabbit: connects to the Internet and read out your favourite RSS feeds, tell you the weather forecasts.
- 13. Nest learning thermostat: learns the temperature you like, connect to the Internet to get weather forecast and it can be monitored and adjusted via Internet. 13
- 14. Not just beautifully designed products that are in the market are Internet connected. Hackers/ innovators are also using Arduino to create Internet connected devices. 14
- 15. An antique clock was transformed to a weather clock. It connects to the Internet, downloads the current weather forecast and displays it on the clock. 15
- 16. Tweet-a-pot: Coffee machine is connected to Twitter using Arduino. Tweet to turn the machine on. 16
- 17. Microprinter: Connect a second hand printer to the Internet using Arduino - print out daily reminders, notifications and so on. http://tomtaylor.co.uk/projects/microprinter
- 18. Little Printer by Berg (which you can buy) which does exactly what the Microprinter does. But it’s beautiful. With more and more people building their own prototypes, it changes the way things are being designed. What people hack would be what we buy in the future.
- 19. Yesterday Today Tomorrow we design for we design for we design for Desktop Mobile Physical + Digital
- 20. When physical designers designed a fridge 10 years ago, they focused on the size, the material, the handle and so on. Now, the unique selling point of a fridge is its technology and smartness (e.g. LG smart fridge which was introduced in CES 2012).
- 21. We’re not just moving from digital to physical. It happens the other way round too. A group of people use 3D printing technology to create a village from the Minecraft online game. They took the virtual world to our physical world.
- 22. http://ubersuper.com/uploads/yapb_cache/ James Bridle gave a lot of examples where people pixelpour23.69sj1a93fuo00gk8o40kw8w0k.jobm8bab0jk0ckw0ogww0488.th.jpeg http://www.flickr.com/photos/stml/6203921904/ bring digital concepts into our 3D environment in his talk in Web Directions Sydney 2011. http://www.flickr.com/photos/bashford/6208958674/ http://www.yaean.com/en/blog/2010/07/28/douglas-coupland-orca-sculpture/
- 23. Really Interesting Group created Christmas decorations based on their friends’ social media data (e.g. Flickr, Last.fm, Twitter and Dopplr). Another example of bridging the digital to the physical.
- 24. + + ❤ ❤ Hackers, Physical products Digital products Makers, Innovators = Digital and physical are combining. If you are a digital interaction designer now, in coming years, your client would expect you to also be able to design the physical parts of the product Tomorrow’s too. designers
- 25. “You are not changing career, your career is changing” You need to start thinking and preparing because it’s not that you’re (or you want) to change your career, your career IS changing! 25
- 26. So... How could we prepare for the change? http://www.flickr.com/photos/paolomazzoleni/436307747/
- 27. Touch Pain Understand the senses that are Temperature being used when users interacting with digital and Kinaesthetic sense physical products. Not just sense of sight, hearing or smell, but also sense of touch. http://www.flickr.com/photos/thenickster/3667839998/
- 28. In his book (Emotional Design), Don Norman described three dimensions which we use to craft our experience with a product: Visceral: about the look/appearance Behavioural: about its use/practicability Reflective: about self-image Visceral Behavioural Reflective
- 29. Use these dimensions to help you to design products which differentiate your product from your competitors. Visceral Behavioural Reflective
- 30. You might need to have new skills or knowledge. You don’t have to be expert in everything, but it’s important to have a basic level of these knowledge. Skills & knowledge
- 31. Safety/Ergonomics Packaging Tooling Shelf life Life cycle Sustainability CAD drawing Prototyping skills Durability Materials Production
- 32. Other touchpoints.... You’re already doing these! User requirements Business requirements Market Culture: Think from different angles (e.g. Culture & tradition Japanese desire for lightness when it comes to physical product whilst British desire for Profit margin sold objects. Both are about quality. Out of box experience Easy to be maintained and serviced
- 33. Other touchpoints.... You’re already doing these! User requirements Business requirements Market Culture & tradition Profit margin Cost of physical products: material, production, packaging, transportation and storage cost. These costs apply to each individual product you produce and sell. The impact is much more significant!
- 34. Other touchpoints.... You’re already doing these! User requirements Business requirements Market Culture & tradition Profit margin Out of box experience: Not just about the first impression when Out of box experience unpacking and unboxing, but it also includes how easy to set up and to connect.
- 35. Other touchpoints.... You’re already doing these! User requirements Business requirements Market Culture & tradition Profit margin Products should be easy to maintain and servic. You don’t Out of box experience want to have to dismantle the whole product just to change a battery. Easy to be maintained and serviced
- 36. Working team You will need to work with people from different areas when designing for a physical and digital product.
- 37. Engineers Managers Users Designers Part suppliers http://www.flickr.com/photos/scottishgovernment/5081613382/
- 38. Engineers Managers Users These people have the knowledge. Get them involved as early as possible and constantly communicate with each other throughout the Part suppliers whole design process. Designers http://www.flickr.com/photos/scottishgovernment/5081613382/
- 39. Ways of working The ways of working might be different too. But in some cases, you could still apply the same approach which you used when designing a website or software to physical product design.
- 40. You can always observe how people improvise in their daily life if you’re looking to design a new product.
- 41. If you already have a product, you can observe how people use it, spot the problems they have and improve those problems.
- 42. Bosch did an observation research in India to see how their German designed washing machine fit into their Indian users’ life. They went to their house and observe their daily routine and understand their culture. They found that the washing time needs to be shorter because Indian families have to do their laundry everyday.
- 43. Donna Rosa handbags: 1000 online survey was carried out with business women around the world before the handbag was designed. The design of this handbag provides exactly what the users need because each single detail is created based on the problems the designer heard in the survey.
- 44. The way you prototype will be different - wireframes don’t work in physical product design. Omnigraffle team created a iPad prototype using a piece of wood before iPad was out in the market. This is a good example of hardware + software prototyping.
- 45. Prototyping doesn’t have to expensive/complicated. A Royal College of Art student used blue foam to create different shapes of hairdryer to find the best one for hairdressers.
- 46. Physical products prototyping ‣ Could it work? ‣ Any problems? ‣ What’s needed? ‣ How much? ‣ How to build it? Prototyping allows you to investigate if your idea could work, to identify potential problems (e.g. James Dyson created 5127 prototypes). You can also build BOM (Bill of Materials) from your prototype.
- 47. You can’t use Axure or Clickable Wireframes to present your prototype in physical product design. Storyboard (or sequential arts) is a good way to show the interactions people have with your product.
- 48. It can be a quick sketch storyboard, in a comic format, photo-based or created from various video clips.
- 49. Or you can use role playing/ improvisation to present your prototype or concept.
- 50. Some people used videos to mock up and improvise how their product could be used.
- 51. To sum up... We’ve looked at how physical and digital worlds are combining, and how products are moving just physical or just digital to integrated products. We also looked at the transferable skills and knowledge. There are many overlaps. It’s NOT a complicated transition. 51
- 52. Our Future But the future is not yet defined. The products we design in the future do not necessary have to be all touchscreen based or can only be functioned via Internet connection (e.g. you don’t want your toaster crashes because the Internet connection is too slow or coffee machine doesn’t work because Twitter is down). The world will be unusable in this case. http://www.flickr.com/photos/42232541@N04/4267059618/
- 53. Our Future We, designers are the people to make sure these situations don’t happen. We can shape how our future world is going to be. So, let’s create products which will work in the way we want them to work for a more usable and delightful world. http://www.flickr.com/photos/42232541@N04/4267059618/
- 54. Thank you Chui Chui Tan @ChuiSquared