Fusing Design with Technology

PreacherTom writes "Since the creations by Walt Disney of Space Mountain and EPCOT, progressives have attempted to show us a picture of how technology will affect our future lives. More often than not, these pictures become laughable after 20 years. Not for Royal Philips Electronics, who at their Simplicity Event in London unveiled their picture of the seamlessly technological future, including e-blackboards, cosmetic skintone scanners, and (sure to make the mouths of geeks water) the amBXT Immersive Gaming Experience."

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People Focus: It's a two edged sword

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PEOPLE FOCUS. Consequently, Philips is changing, says Stefano Marzano, CEO and chief creative director for Philips Design, "from a company in which technology called the shots to one in which the focus is firmly on people."


To some degree this has to be regarded as poppycock. The corporation will never be focused on people, because people are merely instrumental to profit.

What this means is that the corporation will abstract what it sees as the relevant details of you, then place you in a pigeonhole. Information technology allows many details to be extracted, and the number of pigeonholes to be much larger than the two or three that pre IT era companies had to content themselves with.

QUASI-HUMANS. Using the insights from its research, the company developed personas--individual composite characters with particular needs and characteristics--to design appropriate solutions. These 14 entities, ranging in age from 5 to 53, illustrated the five key themes behind the event.

See what I mean?

The result can be surprisingly good. In just the context of the relationship between the consumer and the company, this is on balance a good thing. The corporation must have a strategy for making a profit, and this requires that they categorize their customers. More categories means better service.

In the wider context of society, there are dangers in this reductionistic view of humanity.

It is one thing to devise products that will fit the needs of specific groups of people, but increasingly marketing is focused on creating relationships and knowing individual customers. This involves a kind of surveillance, which is offered by companies like ChoicePoint. But information that may serve well to put you in a company's marketing pigeonholes, particularly when it is purchased by the government for security or other applications that affect you as a citizen. One of ChoicePoint's subsidiaries, DBT, was involved in the disastrous attempt to purge the Florida voting roles of convited felons in the 2000 presidential election. That effort improperly disenfranchised 8,000 voters in an election whose margin of victory was 537 votes.