My slides from Interaction 12 in Dublin, Ireland. User experience is important but it's not everything: Designing for physical versus digital products.

1. Designing for
physical versus digital products
Chui Chui Tan
@ChuiSquared
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dorena-wm/4486051522/

2. For now, we can
broadly group
designers into
physical and digital
Designers designers.
❤ ❤
Physical products Digital products

3. I was a physical product designers when I worked with Panasonic
designing the physical part of their stereo sets. Now, I’m a digital
designer because most of my work is digital based.
However, such clear categorisation is no longer valid.
Physical product designer Digital product designer

4. This is what physical
product designers used
to design - focused on
product’s form, shape,
material, how parts
attach together. 4

5. This is what physical
designers have been
designing in recent years -
physical products now have
to incorporate with digital
interface or with software. 5

6. Years ago, digital designers
used to design only for
desktop - focused only on
the website, the IA
(information architecture),
the images, the copy and
content.

7. Now, we are designing more
and more for mobile....

8. ... and for tablets.
Hence, we’ve to consider devices’
sizes, resolution, the interaction
these devices support, the context
of use of these devices - a lot
about the physical devices.

9. The trend: both digital and
physical are combining and
interlinking. No more
cutting lines between the
two.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wecand/4109772863/

10. Network
Connectivity
Context-awareness
Data
Sensors
Multipurpose
Dan Saffer
Author of ‘Designing Devices’ Updatability
Dan Saffer listed the
characteristics which
differentiate the devices
of today from previous
eras.

11. Devices now are serving as
the Internet’s interface to
the physical world.
“The number of things
connected to the Internet
has already exceeded the
number of people on
earth.”
Cisco

12. Nabaztag, a Internet-enabled electronic
rabbit: connects to the Internet and
read out your favourite RSS feeds, tell
you the weather forecasts.

13. Nest learning thermostat: learns the
temperature you like, connect to the
Internet to get weather forecast and it can
be monitored and adjusted via Internet.
13

14. Not just beautifully designed
products that are in the market are
Internet connected. Hackers/
innovators are also using Arduino to
create Internet connected devices.
14

15. An antique clock was transformed to a
weather clock. It connects to the
Internet, downloads the current weather
forecast and displays it on the clock.
15

16. Tweet-a-pot: Coffee machine is connected
to Twitter using Arduino. Tweet to turn
the machine on.
16

17. Microprinter: Connect a second hand
printer to the Internet using Arduino -
print out daily reminders, notifications and
so on.
http://tomtaylor.co.uk/projects/microprinter

18. Little Printer by Berg (which you can
buy) which does exactly what the
Microprinter does. But it’s beautiful.
With more and more people building
their own prototypes, it changes the
way things are being designed.
What people hack would be what we
buy in the future.

19. Yesterday Today Tomorrow
we design for we design for we design for
Desktop Mobile Physical +
Digital

20. When physical designers designed a fridge 10 years ago,
they focused on the size, the material, the handle and
so on. Now, the unique selling point of a fridge is its
technology and smartness (e.g. LG smart fridge which
was introduced in CES 2012).

21. We’re not just moving from digital to physical. It
happens the other way round too.
A group of people use 3D printing technology to
create a village from the Minecraft online game.
They took the virtual world to our physical world.

22. http://ubersuper.com/uploads/yapb_cache/
James Bridle gave a lot of examples where people
pixelpour23.69sj1a93fuo00gk8o40kw8w0k.jobm8bab0jk0ckw0ogww0488.th.jpeg http://www.flickr.com/photos/stml/6203921904/
bring digital concepts into our 3D environment in
his talk in Web Directions Sydney 2011.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bashford/6208958674/ http://www.yaean.com/en/blog/2010/07/28/douglas-coupland-orca-sculpture/

23. Really Interesting Group created
Christmas decorations based on their
friends’ social media data (e.g. Flickr,
Last.fm, Twitter and Dopplr).
Another example of bridging the digital
to the physical.

24. + +
❤ ❤ Hackers,
Physical products Digital products Makers,
Innovators
= Digital and physical are
combining.
If you are a digital interaction
designer now, in coming years,
your client would expect you
to also be able to design the
physical parts of the product
Tomorrow’s too.
designers

25. “You are not changing career,
your career is changing”
You need to start thinking and
preparing because it’s not that
you’re (or you want) to change
your career, your career IS
changing!
25

26. So... How could we prepare for
the change?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/paolomazzoleni/436307747/

27. Touch
Pain
Understand the senses that are
Temperature being used when users
interacting with digital and
Kinaesthetic sense physical products.
Not just sense of sight, hearing
or smell, but also sense of touch.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thenickster/3667839998/

28. In his book (Emotional Design), Don Norman
described three dimensions which we use to
craft our experience with a product:
Visceral: about the look/appearance
Behavioural: about its use/practicability
Reflective: about self-image
Visceral Behavioural Reflective

29. Use these dimensions to help you to design
products which differentiate your product
from your competitors.
Visceral Behavioural Reflective

30. You might need to have new skills or
knowledge. You don’t have to be expert in
everything, but it’s important to have a basic
level of these knowledge.
Skills & knowledge

31. Safety/Ergonomics
Packaging
Tooling
Shelf life
Life cycle
Sustainability
CAD drawing
Prototyping skills
Durability Materials
Production

32. Other touchpoints.... You’re already doing these!
User requirements
Business requirements
Market
Culture: Think from different angles (e.g.
Culture & tradition Japanese desire for lightness when it comes
to physical product whilst British desire for
Profit margin sold objects. Both are about quality.
Out of box experience
Easy to be maintained and serviced

33. Other touchpoints.... You’re already doing these!
User requirements
Business requirements
Market
Culture & tradition
Profit margin Cost of physical products: material,
production, packaging, transportation
and storage cost.
These costs apply to each individual
product you produce and sell. The
impact is much more significant!

34. Other touchpoints.... You’re already doing these!
User requirements
Business requirements
Market
Culture & tradition
Profit margin Out of box experience: Not just
about the first impression when
Out of box experience unpacking and unboxing, but it
also includes how easy to set up
and to connect.

35. Other touchpoints.... You’re already doing these!
User requirements
Business requirements
Market
Culture & tradition
Profit margin
Products should be easy to
maintain and servic. You don’t
Out of box experience want to have to dismantle the
whole product just to change a
battery.
Easy to be maintained and serviced

36. Working team
You will need to work with
people from different areas
when designing for a physical
and digital product.

37. Engineers Managers
Users
Designers Part suppliers
http://www.flickr.com/photos/scottishgovernment/5081613382/

38. Engineers Managers
Users
These people have the
knowledge. Get them involved
as early as possible and
constantly communicate with
each other throughout the
Part suppliers whole design process.
Designers
http://www.flickr.com/photos/scottishgovernment/5081613382/

39. Ways of working
The ways of working might be
different too. But in some
cases, you could still apply the
same approach which you used
when designing a website or
software to physical product
design.

40. You can always observe
how people improvise in
their daily life if you’re
looking to design a new
product.

41. If you already have a
product, you can observe
how people use it, spot
the problems they have
and improve those
problems.

42. Bosch did an observation
research in India to see how
their German designed
washing machine fit into
their Indian users’ life.
They went to their house
and observe their daily
routine and understand
their culture.
They found that the
washing time needs to be
shorter because Indian
families have to do their
laundry everyday.

43. Donna Rosa handbags:
1000 online survey was
carried out with business
women around the world
before the handbag was
designed.
The design of this
handbag provides exactly
what the users need
because each single
detail is created based
on the problems the
designer heard in the
survey.

44. The way you prototype
will be different -
wireframes don’t work in
physical product design.
Omnigraffle team
created a iPad prototype
using a piece of wood
before iPad was out in
the market.
This is a good example of
hardware + software
prototyping.

45. Prototyping doesn’t have to
expensive/complicated.
A Royal College of Art student used
blue foam to create different
shapes of hairdryer to find the best
one for hairdressers.

46. Physical products prototyping
‣ Could it work?
‣ Any problems?
‣ What’s needed?
‣ How much?
‣ How to build it?
Prototyping allows you to investigate
if your idea could work, to identify
potential problems (e.g. James
Dyson created 5127 prototypes).
You can also build BOM (Bill of
Materials) from your prototype.

47. You can’t use Axure or Clickable
Wireframes to present your
prototype in physical product design.
Storyboard (or sequential arts) is a
good way to show the interactions
people have with your product.

48. It can be a quick sketch storyboard,
in a comic format, photo-based or
created from various video clips.

49. Or you can use role playing/
improvisation to present your
prototype or concept.

50. Some people used videos to mock up
and improvise how their product
could be used.

51. To sum up...
We’ve looked at how physical and digital worlds
are combining, and how products are moving just
physical or just digital to integrated products.
We also looked at the transferable skills and
knowledge. There are many overlaps. It’s NOT a
complicated transition.
51

52. Our
Future
But the future is not yet defined. The products we
design in the future do not necessary have to be all
touchscreen based or can only be functioned via
Internet connection (e.g. you don’t want your toaster
crashes because the Internet connection is too slow
or coffee machine doesn’t work because Twitter is
down). The world will be unusable in this case.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/42232541@N04/4267059618/

53. Our
Future
We, designers are the people to make sure these
situations don’t happen. We can shape how our
future world is going to be.
So, let’s create products which will work in the
way we want them to work for a more usable and
delightful world.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/42232541@N04/4267059618/

54. Thank you
Chui Chui Tan
@ChuiSquared