Thirteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

This paper focuses on post-industrial design, especially the Internet of Things and the comfortable behaviour behind systems. People’s behaviour is constantly changing according to the new technologies, which, in turn, are changing to better satisfy human needs. In this specific contest, people, communities, rules and lifestyles move into new paradigms, that convey habits and new situations within different fields (Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity). In the last two decades, as the innovation has changed the communication, the products hve become smaller and portable, therefore people learned new wayd to use them. As applications of technology have increased, things have gained new modalities of use, which are permeated in all the objects of daily life, transforming them and consequentially our perception of the world. Nowadays we communicate, we see and discover the world through the screen of our smartphone; we talk with it to interact with our homes; we entrust with internet to do almost everything and making smart devices as an intrusive partner. This perspective is inducing to wander several questions: what is the threshold that could lead to addiction? What is the role of the comfort in this system - and how can we not surpass it? What scenarios are we going to match? (Andrea Signorelli, Rivoluzione Artificiale) In order to find the right answers to the questions above, it is necessary to deeply investigate the relationship between humans and devices, allowing us to understand how to split them and, as a consequence, how to preserve our identity.