This project set out to develop a design approach for producing conceptual electronic products that encourage complex and meaningful reflection on inhabitation of a ubiquitous, dematerializing, and intelligent environment: a form of social research to integrate critical aesthetic experience with everyday life.

Whereas architecture and fine art often refer to popular culture, industrial design is popular culture. Its language is accessible and appeals to the senses and imagination rather than the intellect. I hope in my approach I have retained the popular appeal of industrial design while using it to seduce the viewer into the world of ideas rather than objects. Industrial design locates its object in a mental space concerned with identity, desire, and fantasy and shaped by media such as advertising and television. Again, I hope this remains intact but is subverted to challenge the aesthetic values of both consumers and designers.

One result of this research is a toolbox of concepts and ideas for developing and communicating design proposals that explore fundamental issues about how we live among electronic objects. The most important elements of this approach are: going beyond optimization to explore critical and aesthetic roles for electronic products; using estrangement to open the space between people and electronic products to discussion and criticism; designing alternative functions to draw attention to legal, cultural, and social rules; exploiting the unique narrative possibilities offered by electronic products; raising awareness of the electromagnetic qualities of our environment; and developing forms of engagement that avoid being didactic and utopian. The...