Appliances as Web 2.0 Peripherals in the new age of cloud computing

Having studied the past, how do young designers at RISD envision the future of appliances today? The conclusion is clear. One hundred years ago a string of innovative new electrical appliances (from toasters to vibrators to vacuum cleaners) were designed to make use of the new mass distribution of electricity. A century later, we are in a similar moment of high innovation. But the utility the young designers instinctively responded to was “cloud computing”, not electricity. In their near-future scenarios, these designers imaginatively considered appliances as Web 2.0 peripherals.

What does this mean? “Cloud computing” refers to the time when computation will take place in a centralized “cloud” of data servers to provide a service as ubiquitous as electricity is today. Thus, the appliances we use will become “peripheral devices” that “talk” to the cloud, but won’t need computer hardware to so.

Further, these new appliances will not be toasters and vacuum cleaners, but products that are interactive and respond to emotional as well as physical data. Originally the Internet handled documents, but Web 2.0 refers to the shift toward social network interactions. Already many Web 2.0 Internet applications feed information into the cloud, and reveal us to ourselves as we become human sensors, adapting to and describing social networks and emotional states. (For example, this capability is imaginatively revealed in the Web 2.0 project "We feel fine".) When this possibility is coupled with new smart materials that respond to bodily metrics, a whole new range of design possibilities open up. It is a given that we will use gestures of touching the surfaces of our Web 2.0 appliances in order to sort information on demand.

The work of the RISD-ID Appliance Studio student designers reveals a future of networked appliances and smart materials that will provide metrics about our own emotional and bodily condition, and that of others. It is in part a practical world where data from one context is easily transported to another location, and turned into useful information. In other scenarios the students predicted a future of narrative and role playing that cuts to the heart of how we present ourselves to our self, to our partners or to anonymous “others”. Still other projects dealt with light and time, and the tool/nature interface.

We are in the middle of a period of innovation and the future is still to be determined. Personal portable computers did not become widely available until the 1980s. This first decade of the 21st century has brought us a host of hand-held devices. And within another decade each of us will be managing a personal network of 1000 devices, according to a recent European Union study. Who will design these devices in the coming Internet of Things or IoT?

Clearly the design of appliances as Web 2.0 peripherals in the new age of cloud computing is an opportunity of great magnitude for industrial designers. If we look to the past and the historical analogy of mass electrification, we discover that the form language of electrical appliance design was in large part determined by the electrical engineering industry and sheet metal manufacturing companies that had staked out this new market. And so we need to ask: what industry will move in to develop the future of Web 2.0 peripheral devices? Will these products be defined mostly by cell phone companies, like Nokia’s morph and lifelog project? Or computer software and hardware companies, like Microsoft and Apple? Or can we approach the problem another way? What do RISD’s young industrial designers see?

The RISD-ID Advanced Studio on Appliance Design, co-taught by Nancy Austin and Lane Myer invites you to the Final Crit and Semester Review on Thursday December 11, 2008. For more information please contact: naustin@risd.edu.

2008 RISD-ID Appliance Studio Members

Joo Hae Lee, Combined Appliances
Meng Le, Small friends for Big Appliances
Tal Yehoud, Interactive Elevator Appliances
Michelle Lee, Light Pattern Home Appliance

Amy Su, Shared Heartbeat Appliance
Bam Wipop Suppipat, Emotional Safety Appliance
Andrew Bui, New Interactions for Time, Light, and Nature Appliances
Arthur Harsuvanakit, A Good World Appliance

Crystal Soares, Stored Rest Appliance
Toomi Moilanen, Coffee4U Appliance
Ashley Schwebel, An Apt Appliance
Soomi Lee, Sex Play