The next wave of technology will bring some new opportunities that designers are not yet equipped to deal with. With distributed, pervasive or ubiquitous computing and new materials technologies, smart objects will interact with each other (and with you) and physically change in response to the task or the time of day or your mood.

What is the new language of forms, figures, gestures and choreographies that will shape that experience? What are the narratives and metaphors that will give meaning to these interactive objects and systems?

We need new tools for designing the experience of dynamic interactive physical technology. Don’t start with the object. Start with the story, or routine or ritual of people’s everyday lives. Develop narratives that the objects populate and play a role in. Develop different modes of interaction with technology. Instead of thinking just about static compositional issues we will be thinking about gesture and pose, body language and sequence of movement.

New materials technologies will include smart fabrics made from conductive polymers and fiber optics that will allow clothing that thinks, and can change pattern and color on demand. New surfaces can change color and pattern like a chameleon to match their surroundings. Smart gels which can be formulated to expand and contract like muscles in response to microvoltages in microseconds.

This makes possible dynamic products that are not mechanical in their movements, but fluid and lifelike, capable of gesture and attitude.

We might create casts of characters from groups of objects that talk to each other and interact with each other and with you. Casting is as important as it is in a movie. When the right character and role come together there is magic. There is the possibility of three dimensional agents or avatars that understand and do your physical chores or collect desired things for you. Think about scripting objects that move and mutate within a space and during the day.

We could create seamless experiences from object and user to web. The experience, from the physical form of the object, and it’s materials, to the feel of the controls (tactility, force feedback etc.) to the world inside the machine on the web should be satisfying and compelling.

One approach is to de-emphasize the things that are not important and foreground the things that are, like haptic objects and tools or the actual display of information. We need to think about figure ground relationships so that one can make choices about what draws the eye.

We need to get into and understand the routines, rituals and ceremonies of people’s lives. Designers should study Eisenstein and cinema, surrealism, and installation and performance art. Highly subtle force feedback technology means that we should look at the craft interaction between hand/tool/medium, the resistance, texture and possibilities of the medium.

We need to look beyond the plastic arts to the performing arts, cinema, dance and people like Robert Wilson and Laurie Anderson. In addition we can look at traditional ceremonial forms like the tea ceremony and liturgical groupings.

Any process that draws designers into a deeper understanding of how people interact and live with objects and technology will be a giant step forward.

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© 2000 High Ground Design. Reprinted from www.2011_highgrounddesign.com