Products choosing us

30th May 2013

By Ben Flannaghan

Since Loughborough University built its impressive new Design School it has expanded its role and is becoming a Design Centre, and not just for the Students. Recently I attended an interesting talk from Sebastian Conran and also a fascinating talk from the Design and Emotion Society. This society originated from Denmark but is expanding all over the world with Loughborough University becoming the first UK Chapter.

The talk was about the increasing need for products to hold an emotional connection with the world and its users. This video below eloquently dreams up a situation where everyday products choose the user. This means that if the product is miss-used or unused then the products can chose to go to a different home and a different user. This role reversal is fascinating and will spark interesting ideas for future products and systems. It also makes use of the idea of sharing items and prolong life cycles buy changing users instead of being thrown away. Enough of me, the video is below: