Transcriber: Chiara Coletta Reviewer: Elisabeth Buffard
I design products for a living.
I'm an industrial designer.
What I wanted to do today is do several things.
I wanna tell you how technology is changing the way I work,
and by extension kind of changing the way the world that you live in.
I'd like to tell you that story
through the story of everyday objects disappearing.
Before I go there, I wanna to ask for a show of hands from the audience.
Who, in the audience, know what an industrial designer is.
If you know, can you raise...
That's pretty impressive.
But for those who don't know or aren't quite sure,
I would ask you, the following questions.
What are you sitting on right now?
What device did you use to make coffee this morning?
Or what device did you use to tweet about the last speaker?
Because all these products have been designed by industrial designers.
So we design most of the everyday objects you interact with.
Industrial design is everywhere.
A world without industrial designers
would end up looking a little something like this.
So, we need designers to design all our products --
everyday products.
But in the relatively short time that I have been a designer,
the profession of industrial design has changed quite dramatically.
And I have too.
I'd like to give you a little bit of personal background.
This is Jean Prevot. He is my grandfather.
He is the reason why I became an industrial designer.
He was a mechanics and all throughout his life,
he would design products of all sorts:
products, instruments, tools,
and launch businesses out of his inventions.
So anytime he would set his mind to something
or he try to create something,
it always be to try to solve a problem.
He would always come up with very creative solutions,
and he always end up with something
that would make somebody's life better.
So, he didn't call himself that way but he was a designer.
So naturally next to him,
he taught to me how to tinker with things,
how get my hands dirty with mechanics,
how to fix things,
but more importantly how to built physical objects.
He's been a great source of inspiration.
This is why I became a designer.
For me, it was a perfect opportunity to marry my mechanical inclinations
– he taught me – and my artistic sense.
He was a great source of inspiration.
This is Anton, my son.
He is another source of inspiration.
While my grandfather taught me about physical inventions,
my son taught me about personal reinvention.
Now, you see him here playing on the playstation
one of this violent shoot-them-up videogame
while watching a rate R episode of South Park on his iPad.
( Laughter )
So when you see this, I think we can all agree on two things:
one, I have great parenting skills.
(Laughter)
Right!
Because, Anton wholeheartedly agrees to that statement.
But two, as humans, we are changing.
But let me explain why, what I mean by that.
When I saw him do this, I was upset.
That was my initial reaction.
I slapped him upside the head and I said:
"Stop doing this, you can't do it!"
(Laughter)
Because, honestly, I couldn't do that,
so I assume he couldn't do it.
(Laughter)
But the fact is that he was able to do relatively well.
He was performing at the game, he was laughing at the jokes.
He could actually do it.
So this is the moment
where I realized that we are changing.
As human we are constantly evolving
and we are constantly reinvented ourselves.
You know, the next generation
interacts with products in completely different ways
than the generation before them.
To that point, there was a very good article.
in the Atlantic.
It was about the power of design
and it was dealing about that very thing
about generational differences
in terms on how people interact with products
from different ages.
And it was using the example of the door bell.
I'll first ask you:
"How do you about interacting with such a simple device?"
Chances are if you are like my father or myself,
you will use your forefinger. Right?
Because that's the most natural thing to do.
But chances are if you're like Anton,
you've built so much dexterity in your thumbs by playing and texting
that the most natural thing to do it's to use your thumb.
Now for me, this is a perfect example
of how technology is changing human behavior.
But it's also a perfect example
of how technology is forcing industrial designers
to reinvent themselves.
Now, speaking of reinvention.
I've had to reinvent myself
a number of times since I moved here.
I moved here from Paris, France
to join one of the leading US consultancy
here in the city.
The name of the company is Bresslergroup
and it is based here in the heart of the city.
Now when I moved here,
and that may have been the result of cultural difference
or misunderstanding,
people thought I was a bit of an artist.
At the time I didn't quite understand why they felt that way.
(Laughter)
Seriously, if you were to ask me if I see it today,
I'd tell you, yeah now I see it, I see it.
(Laughter)
I've tried to clean up a bit.
But, seriously, when I moved here, you know, I was excited,
but I was scared at the same time.
I was excited because this is a country where
an industrial designer can actually make it
to the cover of Time magazine.
This is R'aymond Loewy in the 50s.
He's most often referred to as being the father of industrial design.
But, at the same time, he was born in Paris,
raised in France and moved here to the US
to make him big and invent industrial design.
So that was very comforting to me.
But still I was scared because I was moving to new country.
I had to learn a new culture,
new ways of working and living,
and on the top of that, I had to learn a new language.
So when I got here, I had no choice
I had to change.
And I had to reinvent myself on a personal level.
Now professionally, the changes have been quite significant as well.
I'd like to walk you through
a very short history of industrial design,
just for context, so that I can tell you
the changes that it is currently going through.
And to do that, we need to go back
and look at the early days of mass production, early 1900s.
Back then, there was very little need for product differenciation.
Affordability, availability were big enough benefits.
But soon, consumer expectations were starting to change,
because people grew tired of products that were all the same.
And that change in consumer behavior
led to the birth of industrial design.
Now --
at that point, companies started to turn towards industrial designers.
They were looking for innovation.
But initially, innovation in industrial design meant
primarily styling for differentiation.
And this is what Raimond Loewy did --
that designer on the cover of Time magazine --
and you see here examples of the products
that he is very well known for.
And I would call your attention
to that pencil sharpener on the right-hand side there.
That pencil sharpener did not do anything different
than any other competitive products on the market at that time.
But it looked differenciated, it looked streamlined,
-- it was new at the time --
it looked attractive.
And that's the perfect example of what industrial designers did
in the early days of industrial design.
Now, when people talk about the birth of industrial design,
they most often refer to Raymond Loewy.
But here in the US,
he had contemporaries in every city.
Here in Philadelphia, his contemporary was Harold Van Doren.
He was an architect.
He built a design practice in the early 40's in Chigago,
and then he moved that practice here to the city of Philadelphia.
He was then succeeded by an industrial designer
named Arper Landor.
They actually work together for about ten years.
And Arper Landor continued that design consultancy
until the early 70's.
And you see here examples of some of the products they worked on.
Again, same thing, same time,
styling for differentiation.
Now in the early 70's,
– actually the year I was born more than 40 years ago –
an industrial designer, fresh out of the school,
named Peter Bresseler,
bought Harper Landor's client list.
He founded Bresselergroup
and he continued to own industrial design legacy here in the city.
You see here examples of some of the products that Peter worked on.
From his first project which was a stand-up wheelchair
to medical device on the left-hand side.
All the way to groundbreaking solar-roofing system
on the right-hand inside,
with huge social and environmental implications and impacts.
So you can see right there
that between the beginning of industrial design
and the end of the 1900's, there was a huge shift happening.
And industrial design and industrial designers
had to reinvent themselves,
to go from styling for differentiation
toward solving real problems and making people's lives better.
Today, two of my partners and I are embarking
into a new era of industrial design.
Technology has become so ubiquitous
that it's finding its way in almost every product that we design.
And what we're seeing is that there is another shift happening
where we're designing less of the physical objects
that we used to design,
and we're moving toward design more of the digital experiences.
But I'll show you this through a couple of examples.
This is a picture I found not long ago, a few days ago,
of me when I first started working with Peter.
To look at the changes that industrial design is going through right now,
you need to look no further than this very ubiquitous product
that is the thermostat here on the wall.
This is the story of everyday objects disappearing
So if you look back at early design for a thermostat like this one,
this is very famous design.
It's a thermostat from Honeywell. It's called a round,
it's considered to be an icon of industrial design,
there's one of thiese at the Smithsonian.
It's a perfect example of good design.
It's ac simple-looking device, very intuitive, very simple to use.
But this is a very physical object.
Anytime you would want to change anything about it,
you'd have to stand up, walk to it, and basically physically interact with it
and change the settings: morning, evening, everyday of the week
every week of the year.
And that soon became a problem.
A problem that got resolved and fixed by the addition of technology.
And here you see -- you probably have seen this in many homes,
you probably have it at home as well.
But here, you can see that the design has shifted already.
It's not so much about the physical object anymore,
it's very much about the digital experience.
But this solves a real problem,
because you can program your heating and cooling cycles,
and you can set it and forget it.
That was improving people's lives hugely. That made sense.
Still that wasn't without problems because people found it frustrating
to basically spend the time to do the programming.
because nobody really figured out how to do it very easily.
(Laughter)
Then come the next generation of products that you're
probably familiar with, the Nest,
which is kind of combining the best of both worlds
because in a course of maybe a week or two,
you gonna walk to it and teach it exactly
what you want the temperature settings to be
and it will learn automatically and set the programming by itself.
This is a very good design, it makes total sense, and
this is probably why this device has been so hugely successful.
Now this is still with some problems,
because it is still a very physical object. And if you want to change anything,
you need to physically interact with it.
So of course there are other options.
This is Taro Box. It's a competitor to the Nest.
You can see here we are stretching, we are going even further
in that shift away from the physical object
toward the digital experience.
Now that white box on the wall, this is the thermostat
but it's been defeatured of any kind of design elements
and all the design effort is going into the design of the digital interface.
It goes a step further because this dumb white box that you see on the wall,
you really don't need to have it on your wall,
because you don't interact with it.
So you can hide somewhere
and all you're left with it's a digital experience.
Now this makes sense for all of us
because now we can control our heating and cooling needs
basically from anywhere at anytime.
And by the way, this solution has all the features and benefits
and more of all the products of the past.
So, when you think of this object,
the thermostat, as a physical object, is going to disappear
under the influence of technology, it's called technology convergence.
This is reinventing the way I do my work everyday.
Technology convergence is forcing
industrial designers to reinvent themselves, again.
Now, if are you're a skeptic like I am, you could say:
"Ok, that's a good example, nice,
but I don't think this is going to affect every product around me."
And I will agree with you. It won't affect every single object.
But I think we all have to realize
that it will be impacting a lot of the objects that we have around us.
Now let me give you another quick example.
Familiar with this?
You probably used to have one.
You probably don't have one anymore.
Very physical object.
Ignition key to start your car and turn it off. Right?
Most of you have probably graduated away from this,
and now have a key fob with a key on it.
Still a physical key but this makes total sense,
because you can open your car and close it from a distance.
It makes your life easier. Right?
Some of you, with more recent cars, probably have seen
that physical object of the ignition key becomes invisible.
Still there, hidden on the inside.
but it's disappearing.
And the usability is great.
You don't have to interact with that key fob.
Keep it in your pocket, your purse, your coat,
and then just walk to your car, push a button and you're on your way.
But of course, this doesn't stop here,
because technology convergence is going to push all that functionality
to smart phones, but also, wearable technology.
Now, GM is offering on all their 2014 models, equipped with ONstar,
this is very functionality where you can do
everything a key fob could do and more... on your phone.
And it's only a matter of time before all GM models offer this functionality
and by extension, all brands of car offer that functionality.
So, these are two examples,
you know, the thermostat and the key fob above.
Everyday objects being affected by technology convergence,
and slowly disappearing over time.
But if you think of all the other objects we have around us,
and I'm not gonna go into every single one of them,
and this is really just a little short hand,
there're many many more objects around us that we use everyday
that are slowly going to be affected
by the exact same thing: technology convergence.
And because change is accelerating,
I think it's only going to be a matter of few years
and in next five years, you will see a lot of these objects
completely disappeaed or be changed forever.
Now that phasing out of the physical artifacts,
this is the future of industrial design.
So, as designers, we moved from styling products
to solving real problems,
to inventing and designing digital experiences.
Now, these changes were very significant
and throughout all this time,
where industrial design had to reinvent itself
and change quite dramatically,
we've seen that basically we are moving away
from designing the physical objects
toward designing the digital experiences.
But just like design has reinvented itself in this shift, so can our cities.
Our cities can also move away from manufacturing the physical objects
and move toward manufacturing the digital experiences.
Now, a city like ours,
it doesn't need hundreds of thousands of assembly-line workers to boom anymore.
A city like ours can become a hub
and a center for innovation and a leader for innovation
with only a few thousand designers, entrepreneurs and creative thinkers.
And to me, all it takes is really to stay nimble,
and so open to waves of change.
That you're built for reinvention.
And whether that means we're inventing a career,
a business, an industry, or even a city.
Now, when I first started designing, I was designing physical objects.
They're slowly starting to disappear before my eyes.
And these changes have a profound impact on the way we behave,
the way we work, and the way we live.
You know, when I was learning next to my granfather,
he taught me that design was all about physical invention.
Then my son taught me that, you know, we are changing.
And that design is not about physical invention,
design is about personal reinvention.
Now these changes are not just affecting me as an industrial designer,
I know and I'm pretty sure that they are affecting you as well.
Think, what are these small changes happening over time,
all around you and slowly pushing you toward reinvention?
So my question to you is,
are you ready to reinvent your city
like many of the speakers you have seen and heard today?
Are you ready to reinvent yourself?
Because as you do so,
my advice is to be sure to listen to your elders
but be equally sure to learn from the next generation.
Because you are already full of answers.
Thank you.
( Applause )