Designing Connected Products

Foreword

Since the dot-com crash of the early 21st century, the Internet has grown up. No longer a just a collection of virtual storefronts, it now facilitates a wide range of human expression and interaction. It catalyzes changes in our culture. It supports intimate contact, and it fuels revolution. Through it, we’ve realized a shift in our relationships, from a centralized model where a few central players control how we communicate to a decentralized one in which the size of your organization matters less than the relevance of your message. The decentralization of media and communication is the most important change brought about by the Internet.

Thus far, we’ve effected that change only through glass rectangles, but not for long. The Internet now connects your car, your car keys, your door lock, your lights, and your exercise regimen. Your informational body can now have a more direct effect on your physical body, and vice versa. We’re only just beginning to understand the implications of this, and to develop the tools to design for it.

Like the authors, I’m not a fan of the term “Internet of Things.” It overlooks this major change that the Internet has brought about in how we communicate, and instead, presents an ideal world in which the automation and centralization of data collection comes first, and the interaction of people and communities comes a distant second, if at all. This change is not about the things, but about the physical interaction those things enable.

We remember ...