The New York Times published an article yesterday on the significance of Apple creating the iPhone without a physical keyboard. While some may find this foolhardy - apparently humans have grown use to the responsiveness afforded by pressing keys with thumbs and fingers - others, such as Mark Rolston of frog design, see it as a move giving "software an increased importance over hardware in product design."
Oddly enough, this is precisely the point made by one Zachary Jean Paradis way back in January when he wrote, "iPhone - the death of product design." As he saw it then, "[The] iPhone presents us a singular moment at the end of the era of 'things' and the beginning of an era of information'."
He compares the iPhone to Motorola's RAZR, which he calls "a modern marvel of complexity, sculpting, and industrial lust" and "the pinnacle of product design." But he goes on to say, "The RAZR's sculpted beauty is also its limitation. It can only have a beautifully sculpted keypad with a set functionality. iPhone's large touch screen elegantly transforms it into whatever it needs to be: a keyboard, a widescreen movie viewer, a random access voicemail interface."
It's clear that with the iPhone, the task of designing what something can do has less to do with crafting its physical structure and more to do with bringing that structure to life as adaptive and manipulable information. As the difference between an object and an interface disappears, the discipline of interactive design, once a subcategory of computer design, assumes a dominant role in product design and development.
Are you ready for that?
Photo courtesy of Celuloso.
Leave a comment