During 1861, William Morris, Ford Madox Brown, Edward Burne-Jones, Charles Faulkner, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, P. P. Marshall, and Philip Webb funded an enterprise called Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. These craftsmen aimed to design aesthetically quality objects and get closely involved in the process of making things and manufacturing, in the similar way to Henry Cole by reacting against the vulgar and incongruous design of that time. One of their most remarkable principles was written and advised by John Ruskin:
“You must remember always that your business as manufacturers is to form the market, as much as to supply it. If, in short-sightedness and reckless eagerness for wealth, you catch at every humour of the populace… you may, by accident snatch the market; or, by energy, command it… But whatever happens to you… the whole of your life will have been spent corrupting public taste and encouraging public extravagance”
John Ruskin’s philosophy inspired designers to reject the ruthless industrial and economic system and embrace art and work in a social service in the community. Thus, aestheticism enhances life standards in society.
Charles Harvey and Jon Press wrote in their book called “William Morris: design and enterprise in Victorian Britain” that William Morris and his partners acted conscientiously under this premise. As a result, they set an example of a successful, substantial and enduring medium-level enterprise which highly values the significant individual as a customer and the ethical nature of demand.
On the other hand, the previous post showed how Embodied Interaction (EI) looks back at the body through the use of technology and it attempts to re-link the creative intelligence to the bodily execution. Hence, technologies like Tangible Computing (TC) are rapidly getting an increasing prominence in our society currently because the world is moving with the physical rather than virtual technological trends. For instance, interactive media such as Arduino, OpenFrameworks, Processing, Kinect and MaxMSP work with sensors and actuators in order to perceive the outer world (humans and environments). Likewise, humans interact with the designed media through their senses so as to understand the message directly not indirectly.
Russell M. Davies has recently presented a conference (Four Thought, RSA London) about what the next technological revolution will be after the Internet and social media. He emphasises the process of making things through TC. For example, Arduino encourages empirical methods of learning by doing and it allows its users to become makers instead of viewers. Thus, makers are able to deconstruct, rebuild, repair and dismantle things with their hands to understand how electronic objects work. Davies cites a Clay Shinky’s quote in order to explain the GeoCities popularity among common people in the Nineties:
“Creating something personal, even of moderate quality, has a different kind of appeal than consuming something made by others, even of high quality”
This implies two indications. Firstly, EI and TC focus on inventors, makers, craftsmen or designers because it empowers their creative methods and capitalises their bodily expressions. As a consequence, designers have acquired a new powerful tool with which to communicate and design. Similarly, they have regained the capacity to form the market responsibly as Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co endeavoured to do in the past. Lastly, technology is becoming incredibly accessible, widely diverse, thoughtlessly disposable and utterly cheap. We can see this when we count the large number of programming languages in every platform that have emerged in the last couple of years and the low cost of a small computers on a single chip such as Arduino. It can be argued that the TC is technically not powerful enough for certain projects but it is refining itself progressively.
Thereby, makers and designers have finally recovered the perfect conditions to design thoughtfully meaningful communication which can change behaviours and solve social problems effectively. In this way, design could enhance the life standards in our society. A good illustration for this is an initiative of Volkswagen called The Fun Theory. This consists of solving everyday problems by changing people’s behaviour through fun. For instance, it encourages people to take stairs instead the escalator by transforming the stairs into a piano key board or it motivates people to throw rubbish in the bin by simulating a deep hole sound. Most of these initiatives are implemented through EI and TC. Consequently, problems are solved more effectively and they remain in the people’s mind for longer.
However, savage consumerism can unconsciously or consciously take these technologies and use them riskily for consumerist and selling purposes; particularly in advertising. Thus, the social and economical designer responsibility, the significant individual as a customers and the ethical nature of demand could be excluded from the economic system once more. In fact, designers could end up working for this consumerist purposes and customers could be bombarded by sensory adverts uncontrollably.
Jesse Schell indicates this implication at DICE 2010. Schell emphasises the consequences of permitting consumerism to design sensory adverts if designers do not assume a truthful and ethical responsibility to conceive thoughtful games or economic and social dynamics. He says that sensors and actuators are going to be everywhere detecting so many things. For example, a tiny CPU could be inserted in all kinds of products and packages. Subsequently, the CPU can be connected to the Internet, light sensors, tilt switches, PIR sensors, piezo elements or ultrasonic range finders. As a result, every human interaction with products could send outputs to their companies in order to promote their interests.
Surprising and significant results could arise from the use of EI and TC in education and civility whereas the only expected result arisen from the use of EI and TC in the consumerism is more consumerism.
“Tell me and I will forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I will understand.” Chinese proverbs