I’m excited to be opening the final day of UX Week 2009 with an exploration of what we can learn from the Web about smart products.

Smart products bring their own design challenges. Internet-connected devices and plastic filled with electronics behave in unexpected ways: what does it means for a physical thing to side-load its behaviour, or for a toy to have its own presence in your social network? What we’ve learned about user experience on the Web is a great place to start: social software, adaptation, designing for action creating action — these are principles familiar on the Web, and still valuable when design is not on the screen but in your hands.

We’ve learned a lot in the recent couple years about designing when there are a lot of moving parts: software, plastic, mechanics, embedded electronics, multiple teams and languages, standards, component costs, fulfilment… it’s a lot to put together and still retain a focus on user experience, and user adaptation. There’s no single project where we’ve got it all right — but there are a load of lessons, and I want to share some of them.

The talk is called Design is in your hands.

I’m in town 17—20 September, so if you’re at UX Week or in San Francisco the day after, let’s hang out.