McCoy, Michael, 'Mutating Products and Other Speculations', lecture, Arizona State University, November 1998.

If we think about what we fundamentally do as industrial designers, it is that we shape peoples experience with objects and technology. To do that we need to have a vision about what the experience of interacting with technology should be. We usually aim to make it a satisfying, understandable and empowering one. Too often we take a reactive rather than a proactive stance in terms of what the user experience will be, repairing a poor experience rather than building a satisfying one from the ground up. To build these experiences we need to develop strategies of interaction. One of the best ways to design satisfying experiences with products is to develop scenarios of use, narratives, scripts and stories that describe how people interact with the things in their lives.

DYNAMIC AND ORGANIC PRODUCTS
There are changes taking place in the media product designers work with, that is the materials and technologies that we shape, that may radically change the look and feel of products and the way we all relate to them in the coming years. If the Twentieth century was a time of autonomous mechanical objects, rigid and immutable, the next Century may be a time of objects that mutate, respond and move fluidly in response to your activities and needs. In addition groups of objects may communicate with each other to shape coordinated experiences. The language of form of these objects will not be the simple geometries and textures with which we are familiar but may be organic and flesh like, or clothing-like, or animal like and constantly in flux, changing as the day, or your life, or your bodily needs and movements change. The concept in software of the avatar or agent that learns your needs and preferences and gradually begins to anticipate them in carrying out your wishes, will migrate to products. Products that sense environmental conditions and respond accordingly will be commonplace.

DESIGNER AS CHOREOGRAPHER
Product design has traditionally been a practice of creating highly resolved but static object forms. As graphic designers are beginning to think of the issues of time and interaction in multi media and interface design, industrial designers are going to have to think about the character and choreography of objects and materials that mutate, transform and react to situations and intentions. The limited toolbox of forms and materials that product designers currently employ, (and mostly have to do with shaping hard, static objects), will have to be vastly expanded. The mutative products of the future will require the designer to construct narratives, interactive conditions and loose choreographies for products to respond to and move within. Experience is key. We sometimes forget as designers, that the most provocative, emotional and evocative things in life are not just visual. All the senses are involved, not just the contemplative senses of sight and hearing but the haptic and kinesthetic contact senses as well.

TAILORED PRODUCTS
In addition, we are entering an era of products are both tailored and tailorable. Tailored to more closely fit the needs and perceptions of members of various subcultures and tailorable by individual users to their needs and preferences. The era of mass is over and we are entering the realm of narrow casting, as opposed to broadcasting, in product design. This is enabled by computer aided design, engineering, manufacturing, order entry and inventory systems that allow the efficiencies of mass production with the choices and variety of hand production. Products are being designed that speak very eloquently to specific users. Some of the emerging strategies for products involving the interaction of two or more people, like video conferencing set-ups, aim to enhance the co-construction of concepts by encouraging and supporting the interaction of groups. These are principles that are already in place in software design and can illuminate possibilities for product design as well.

MATERIALS AND TECHNOLOGY
The designer will be working with a palette of materials and technology that enable entirely new morphologies of objects and systems. They include conductive polymers or composite materials that can contract, expand and move like muscles, electromechanical materials like the piezoelectric devices now found in skis, that can relax or stiffen based on changing conditions and loads, 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 like the new stealth aircraft skin that can change color and pattern like a chameleon to match the surrounding sky and smart gels which can be formulated to react in unexpected ways like hardening when hot and softening when cold, or expanding and contracting like muscles in response to electrical signals. This makes possible dynamic products that are not mechanical in their movements but fluid and lifelike. One can imagine products that shape-shift several times during the day or on certain occasions as needed or desired, clothing that changes color, pattern and style (for example pressed or wrinkled at the touch of a button) Or changes its thermal characteristics in response to the weather. The body itself may become a product, with techniques including scarification in which technology is subcutaneous (beneath the skin but visible) Unlike William Gibson's invisible implants, the technology is signed within the body through physical displacement, color (tattoos) or sub-cutaneous light emitting diodes. Someday everyone will have an electronic tattoo saying Intel Inside (or Motorola).

TRANSMITTABLE EXPERIENCE
The net will offer transmittable haptic experiences. Textures, resistance, viscosity, stickiness, wetness, sliminess, rubberiness will be transmittable on the net. Objects and their environments will be part of a transmitted experience. Push and touch and someone can push and touch back across a continent or an ocean. Technologists are developing physical interfaces that are so subtle that one will be able to transmit the haptic experience of viscosity difference , say between molasses and syrup, or subtle textures like silk versus cotton. This is driven by the needs of remote surgery in which the surgeon in New York has to feel the difference in the resistance of the tissues of the patient in LA. One could check the ripeness of vegetables, by feel, by remote. The transmittablity of physicality is coming and designers should concern themselves with the narratives that give meaning to our physical experience.

Product designers may be involved not so much in fixed forms but in the design of the choreography of the object (the design of the dance): setting up the conditions within which shape-shifting responsive objects interact with people and their situations. Imagine the possibilities when the objects and systems can physically respond to your presence and your needs. Like tailorable internet programs that learn your likes and dislikes-- products may begin to learn and respond based on your responses. 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. Designers can take cues from performance art, interactive plays, animation, clay-mation, cinema, story and narrative in which forms and figures mutate and transform, objects interact with characters and their environment, and all is in flux and in play.

The designer may envision situations and characters, scenarios in which the objects are players or props that enhance the relationships between the players or users. It might involve construction of a narrative, writing a story and inventing characters to populate the story. Since the ultimate goal of design is or should be the quality of the experience, all of the aspects of experience including touch, taste, smell and the kinesthetic experience of the body moving in space should be considered. The thermal, textural, center of balance, resistance, viscosity, sweet spot and other qualities of an object should be considered. When one thinks of the subtle difference between the feel, or "hand", of textiles between different weaves of wool, cotton, silk and nylon, the importance of these choices becomes clear. The senses of the body are incredibly discriminating instruments that can detect differences, and lapses in quality, instantly and with great accuracy.

THE BODY
Technology will increasingly be worn on the body, based on technological progressions including microelectronics, flexible PC boards and displays, advanced wireless communication technologies and advanced battery, piezoelectric generator and solar power technologies. In addition global low power satellite systems like Iridium and others will make connectivity from anywhere to anywhere else possible.

Designers need new paradigms and archetypes. The tradition of body ornament of African cultures is one of the richest sources for clues to how implanted, subcutaneous or ornamentally worn technology could be shaped to enhance the body and communicate the possibilities of close to the body technology. The current paradigm is a small box strapped to the body like the Walkman. Technology that flows, shapes, clings, flatters or symbolizes an attitude is part of a design strategy that fits the product to the culture, the user and the situation.

Given that the current tools for manifesting the shape and feel of products are not adequate to the challenges I have described I would like to speculate on some sources that we as designers could look for to inspiration and guidance to begin to develop a new and broader palette of ideas. If we are the interpreters of technology for people, where do we look for archetypes and paradigms to help in the representation of often abstract and invisible phenomena? I have assembled some images that may help trigger some possibilities for you. These are purely speculations intended to incite the exploration of appropriate forms and materials for the new technologies I have mentioned.

As technology moves onto and into the body we can look to the traditions of bodily ornament for inspiration. In this regard African traditions are very rich sources for me. The place where technology and ornament intersect is very interesting. Imagine as a designer of body worn technology what these incredible images of form material color and texture could mean in our age. The shaping, enhancing, symbolizing, communicating, signaling, attitudinizing possibilities are endless.

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© 1998 High Ground Design. Reprinted from www.2011_highgrounddesign.com