Elizabeth Cummings

Title of Dissertation: Cell Phones and Wearables: Weighing the Importance of Product Design and Technological Change in the Design of Emerging Product Types

What effect did the relationship between technological change and product design have on the design of cellular telephones and wearable technology in the 1990s? I work from a premise of design change of three product types and investigate research and design practices for the production of these objects: standard telephones as they became cell phones; cell phone design that moved from a model structured around technical perfection to one in which the object’s appearance was key; and the transition from wearable computers to wearable technology. By merging the testimonies of designers who worked at Motorola during the 1990s with critical design literature from Bell Labs, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, Nokia and Philips, it has been possible to gain an understanding of the relationship between technological change and product design in the development of new electronic product types.

This project argues for a more integrated approach to studying the design histories of cell phones and wearable technology. Future emphasis should be on the relationship between cell phones and wearables jointly expressed through technology and design, rather than by their separateness as objects defined by parallel design practices. Ultimately I uncovered that by the end of the 1990s, product design was more important to the design of both product types than was technological change.