This presentation was presented at IO Alumni Amsterdam in december 2010 and dives into the subject of product design for the 21st century. It explains how all products are being connected to the web and become Meta Products. It also shows how product designers should cope with this trend.

1. PLATFORM FOR CREATIVE PRODUCTIONS
all content 2010 Booreiland

2. Product mutation in the
21st century
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At the dawn of the 21st century, the concept Product needs to be redefined. In an age of servitization, where more and more
services are brought to consumers via products, the question rises where product boundaries really end.

3. We are about to cross the
line of no return (again)
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Crossing the line of no return for humankind, means we make a (often technological) leap from which we cannot go back,
because we can’t survive without our inventions anymore. In prehistoric times, we made this leap once we started to make our
own tools. It happened again with the Industrial Revolution in which we created machines. Later on we made the leap to
standardized products built in mass-production. Now, with all the internet services delivered to us, we are about to cross that
line once more, being totally dependent on the internet.

4. The Cloud as a user and
machine generated pile of
data
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With the Web 2.0 came information sharing and user-generated content, a phenomenon that greatly added information to The
Cloud. Now, with the rise of Web 3.0, it is computers that are generating new information, rather than the user. This will result
in even more data. This data is always and instantly available.

5. People, products and the
web as a mutually
interdependent system
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Together with products and the web, we form a mutually interdependent system. Every entity needs the other in order to
operate correctly. By means of sensors, actuators, human action and machine computing, there is a symbiotic smart system at
work. Ambient intelligence and ubicomp are just the first examples of what we’re about to get.

6. Meta Products are web
enabled product-service
systems
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Meta Products are more than just a product. They have both a physical part and a web part. The physical part often has a
sensorial and/or an actuator function, while the web part does the data computing. The total system forms the actual service
that is being delivered to the user.

7. Atoms and bits are forced
to be friends
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Products are built up out of atoms, while web services are built up out of bits. This results in totally unbalanced lifecycles and
development costs when we try to combine them into Meta Products. While products go through the fairly linear lifecycles of
design, production, distribution, consumption and disposal, web services undergo small agile cycles and are easily edited. In
terms of costs we see that products have more costs once batch sizes increase, while web services have high initial costs but
are very easily scalable.

8. Products increasingly
become black boxes
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More and more value is being shifted to content rather than to the product itself, while at the same time digital technologies
have no demands for product looks. So the once so popular ‘form follows function’ does not apply anymore. Instead, products
become black boxes. This rises the question how product designers should cope with designing products that do not
intuitively show how they work.

9. Applying data as a material
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I encourage product designers to start thinking about data as a material, one that they can apply onto their products. Data is
there, instantly available, and wireless technologies, such as RFID, QR-codes and WiFi, are cheap to embed. Programmers are
already applying data as a material, just think about all the web mashups that are being done. I think product designers can
learn a lot from that.

10. Network Focused Design
as a new approach
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It’s not only about user-product interaction anymore. Moreover, it’s about user-network and product-network interaction; a user
within a network of people, and products being connected to thousands of other products. I propose Network Focused Design
as a new approach to design products for the 21st century.

11. Meta Products -
Meaningful Design for
The Internet of Things
Expected publication
date spring 2011
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12. PLATFORM FOR CREATIVE PRODUCTIONS
www.booreiland.nl
www.metaproducts.nl
@booreiland
all content 2010 Booreiland