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Products Are People Too

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Products Are People Too

Design can be easier when we acknowledge that products share our homes and malls, and have wants and lives of their own. In short: Products are people too. Matt traces a path through social software, adaptive design and engaging technology, and puts forward an experiential approach to product design.

PRESENTATION Products Are People Too, slide 1

Longer abstract

(Abstraction in speech & thought; Actions under self-control distinguished from those not under control; Aesthetics…)

Objects in the shops, websites, media: These aren’t passive tools but have experiential, social, and other complex qualities. Design can be easier when we acknowledge that products share our homes and malls, and have wants and lives of their own. In short: Products are people too.

But what makes people, well, people?

(Risk-taking; Rites of passage; Rituals…)

Like us, products live in a peopled world. They understand this: Human factors, ergonomics and psychology. What makes people tick: Play, politeness, and other engaging techniques. And social software is aware of the behaviour of groups, and the behaviour of people in groups.

Aren’t there other, more humane descriptions of what makes us human? Perhaps these ideas could shape our products too… so what are they?

(Weaning; Weapons; Weather control (attempts to); White (colour term); World view.)

One additional way of understanding what people are: Donald Brown’s list of human universals, a few of which are interspersed in this abstract.

Another way: Humans and more-than-humans as depicted in myths and science fiction.

Through these, other conceptions of what makes people people, and examples, Matt Webb looks at how we live alongside products, how products act and could act in the world, and whether we might use these ideas to inform the design of all kinds of products—ones that maybe we get along with just a little better.

Slideshow

The slides and notes are online: Products Are People Too presentation, slide 1

It sits alongside two other presentations: The Hills Are Alive with the Sound of Interaction Design (Generation C and experiences), and From Pixels to Plastic presentation (Generation C and physical products).

—Matt.

June 25, 2007

This presentation puts forward an approach to product design which emphasises experience and stories, and is called Products Are People Too. It was originally delivered in June 2007 as the closing keynote to reboot 9.0.