I think one of the most insightful parts of my trip was my chat with Ralf Groene. Ralf leads the design vision of all hardware products at Microsoft. In the 13 years that Ralf has worked with Microsoft his biggest contributions are the Surface, Xbox, and Hololens.
I saw this chat as an opportunity to enquire and validate some of my biggest questions and hypothesis’ for my own project. My first question was:
At Microsoft, what are you trying to do to combat the profitable business model that heavily relies on planned obsolescence?
He replied by saying
The other day I pitched an idea to the CEO at Microsoft where in the future we provide computing and not computers. It’ll be $30-ish a month and the cloud will provide all of the computing power to any device. Like Google Stadia, any device, including phones, will have the same computing power as the highest end PC’s.
Me and Ralf
I congratulated him on an awesome idea. Obviously the initial cost of the devices will be low and much like some other devices that I have looked into won’t be owned by the consumer but by the provider. When the devices break or need some sort of hardware update they will go back to the provider and the consumer will receive a replacement. The provider can then reuse the parts and continue the lifetime of the product.
I love the way he described it as well. Using the words Computers and Computing.
“We won’t sell computers, we will sell computing…”
The second question I asked was…
In order for these products to last, the user will play a key role in respecting and caring for them. Through design, how do you propose to educate the user and show them how to care for products to ensure they last for as long as possible?
He said…
That is a very good question and something I have been thinking about a lot. I think it is important that the product is perceived to have great value by the user. This comes down to great and tightly integrated brand image, user experience, advertising, packaging, look, feel and all of the above to deliver a great product.
This linked me back to Levi’s talk he gave earlier that day that described what we do as designers.
“We create value in a product, beyond the sum of its parts”
So for the purpose of my project I want to focus on developing a strong brand promise for a bike share system and build a cohesive identity for it. Everything that the company does will be strictly dictated by the brand promise. The bikes will reflect this promise aswell.
James's Major Project 