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I'm a materialist , for sure, i love products, i love toys i love stuff, it's in me, i'm trying to stop and try to get rid of the superficial but i can't,I just love stuff( and that might be why i'm an industrial designer).
But here i'm speaking about material, the kind of extra that you are looking for in everyday "stuff",
by material i mean feelings, i mean emotions i mean pleasure, and this pleasure can be an easy one, take this iphone for example, it's been following me forever , in my pocket, in my bag, on my desk, falling , again and again, directly in contact with my keys , my pocket crap ,in contact with my life basically .
Every marks every deformation, every moment is engraved in this phone forever , and this is what i mean by "I'm a materialist" i just loved this phone beyond the interaction, beyond the updates i couldn't make anymore since the hardware was obsolete, this material" aluminum" kept me from replacing it with another piece of plastic junk(read iphone 2 or 3).
On top of this material patina pleasure i have to say that this phone went through hell , literally, he survived multiple crash , multiple abuse to finally die from water immersion ( i will pass the details here as this is a ridiculous story involving water, summer and booze )
And i'm pretty sure that the use of such a material has been helping the survival process of this product.
I heard that the iphone 5 might be made out of aluminum again and this is making me really happy, so i cross my fingers and i will wait, but i would never buy another product without thinking of the patina it could eventually gain after years of usage .
To all my peers industrial designers, the ultimate quest for green design might not be in the obvious, sustainable, recyclable or perishable materials but designing for long term usage might be smarter .
I would say sturdy,stable and upgradable is the key for tommorow's products.( pretty obvious but i wanted to place it here)
So long folks,i'm going to find a spot to show off my phone in my house,after all he's still carrying lots of things beyong data on him.
Ben
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-Ara is developing a free, open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones. Led by Motorola’s Advanced Technology and Projects group Project ARA want to do for hardware what the Android platform has done for software.
"Our goal is to drive a more thoughtful, expressive, and open relationship between users, developers, and their phones. To give you the power to decide what your phone does, how it looks, where and what it’s made of, how much it costs, and how long you’ll keep it."
The design for Project Ara consists of what we call an endoskeleton (endo) and modules. The endo is the structural frame that holds all the modules in place. A module can be anything, from a new application processor to a new display or keyboard, an extra battery, a pulse oximeter--or something not yet thought of!
The ARA team et with Dave Hakkens, the creator of Phonebloks.The community he's been building will be necessary for Motorola to turn Ara into a success story.
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