Connected products

This is a design brief, one of many themes that the Touch project is investigating.

RFID may begin to enable cheap – even disposable – products that have identities and connections to a network. What are the opportunities for integrating services, infrastructure, community and online brands into physical objects?

In the longer-term, how does the economics, form and function of physical products change when every product is a service or touchpoint? What might we call this new class of service-object?

What role might the mobile phone play in this infrastructure? Future products that are too cheap, simple or small to offer screens or buttons might use the NFC mobile phone as a rich interface and a network connection. This may enable a class of devices that don’t have input or output themselves, but still offer rich interactions or interfaces.

This project should investigate the early opportunities of having identities and interactions in cheap and ubiquitous physical products.

References

Shaping Things by Bruce Sterling. “The future will see a new kind of object – we have the primitive forms of them now in our pockets and briefcases: user-alterable, baroquely multi-featured, and programmable – that will be sustainable, enhanceable, and uniquely identifiable.”

Space, Place and Things, New Rules of Tenancy within the Internet of Things. :I am trying to create what I think is an important connect-the-dots game between Internet of Things euphoria, Internet of Things dystopia and a pragmatic set of “design patterns” so that this stuff becomes legible to the “doers”.”

Neopets. Virtual pets with physical counterparts, see also Digital pets.

Build a bear. “Every Build-A-Bear Workshop® furry friend you make is stuffed with a barcode.”

Barcode Battler. “The game used barcodes to create a character for the player to use. Not all barcodes worked as players, instead some represented enemies or powerups. As well as the barcodes provided with the game itself, players were encouraged to find their own barcodes from everyday products.” See also Barcode games

Skannerz. “a series of electronic toys made by Radica Games that use barcode technology to create an interactive battle game that resembles Digimon.”

Hyperscan. “At least initially, HyperScan can fairly be described as a cross between trading card games (TCGs) and video games. It’s the first game system to use RFID technology.”

Talsmann: Using products to introduce cross-country skiing as a spare time activity in China. RFID-enabled products to introduce online information and community.

Read more about these design briefs.

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