iDesign and eFashion German version The future of digital lifestyle devices: emotions, interactivity & individualization A necklace which by glowing shows the mood of the lady wearing it. A computer keyboard made of cloth which can be coiled up and used as a pillow. Or a screen above your telephone at home which shows the sky at the place where the person you are talking to is located�� Roby Stancel, CEO of IDEO, one of the worldwide leading agencies for product design, opened up the session "iDesign & eFashion" with impressions of the future of digital design. For this session, Stephanie Czerny teamed up with an adequate co-moderator for this topic, Germany's lifestyle icon Verona Pooth. High Tech - High Touch Basic tenor of Stancel's speech was: in the future, technology will meet customers more on an emotional level. "It's the emotional value of a product what it's all about. In addition, it has to be as user-friendly as possible. Nobody wants to look for a switcher for ages", says Stancel. Also, the trend of individualization will become more and more important. Peter Kabel, Member of the Board of the Hamburg-based advertising agency Jung von Matt: "Personalization begins with the individual ringtone for the cellphone and ends with advertising, especially on the Internet. On TV, one nearly cannot escape commercials, they're simply there in the middle of a soccer match or a movie. But on the web, customers have an active role. For this reason, here advertisements have to hit it really big." And again it's about emotions. "A one-minute short movie with a catchy plot in a beautiful setting, where the focus seems to be only secondarily about the product will be viewed with pleasure by the Internet users, just because it's entertainment to them." The i-Generation The target group for the trendy digital devices? Terry von Bibra, CEO of Yahoo! Germany describes the buying public of iPod, Blackberry & Co: "It's the iGeneration, young individualists aged between 16 and 34 years who have grown up within the digital world and who naturally use Internet and broadband. They care about brands and are interested in specific labels, but they don't want to be labelled themselves. They want to know: 'What does the brand stand for? What is it's image? Can I identify with it?'" Of course, the design is also important - with one limitation. "When purchasing a product like the iPod it's not the appearance what's crucial. In this case the benefit is more important: the fast and easy upload of music." The Yahoo! website is also built under this consideration. "The design shall help, and not distract", says von Bibra. "It has to be clear and simple and must not slow down or annoy the user." My Design For the designer duo Clemens Weisshaar (industrial design) and Reed Kram (media design) of KRAM/WEISSHAAR it's less about benefit but more about esthetics. These two hipsters are responsible for the design of the Prada Mega Store in New York (2001) and in Beverly Hills (2004). Their most recent design hit: a software which lets the customer himself create a sheet steel table at the computer. And the clou is: again, the consumer can participate interactively in the design process and gets his own one-of-a-kind item. "It's kind of a 'Bastelbogen' which is made digitally by the customer and then is built together by us to a designer table." And closes: "Digital Lifestyle simply is already an integral part of our life." Last Updated 21. October 2005