**2. Aims**

There is an important question that impinges on the future of the practice of industrial design – will there be objects that are at risk of deconstruction, to merge with the environment, in view of the technologies that are developed for the near future and that will replace the existing ones? The overall objective of the work (Corda 2010) reported in this chapter was to carry out a survey of the evolution of form, taking into account the technology of a selected range of consumer technology products in order to deconstruct archetypes that are fixed and propose new concepts, with particular regard to emerging technologies.

With the aim of enabling the widespread use of the methods utilized to answer the aforementioned question and meet the specific objectives underlying the goal of this study,

Technology as a Determinant of Object Shape 7

work in a better way than it does today. There are a number of technologies that, according to Bengisu (2003) and Bengisu & Bekhili (2006), will be the most promising technologies for the near future. This selection was established based on an approach that relates the number of scientific publications with the number of patents over the years. Those reports acknowledge the existence of many emerging technologies such as nanotechnology, biotechnology, super-insulating materials and structures, hydrogen storage and combustion technology. OLED, MEMS and Energy harvesting were chosen because they are emerging technologies that already are used and are soon to emerge on a large scale in the market. Additionally, because the technology and product pairs focused in this chapter were chosen simultaneously, the technology and the product had to be mutually compatible, so they could be articulated (technology and product) enabling the

Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLED), which are also called Light Emitting Polymers (LEP), are a technology which is at the forefront of bright screens and monitors, and has been steadily developing in recent years. OLEDs reached the media headlines in 2003 with one million units sold as part of a small application for an electric shaver from Philips, which gave an indication of the level of battery charge. Sometime later, a colour screen (OLED) also appeared with great success as a monitor on the back of a camcorder; Kodak (a major driving force in developing this technology) finally launched this image technology

The development of MEMS, or micro-electromechanical systems, is responsible for an endless number of modern features and applications. This is a technology that has existed for some time but has expanded greatly in recent years, becoming an increasingly promising technology for the future. As we move into the third millennium, the number of applications for MEMS in our daily lives continues to increase, promoting continuously

Energy harvesting (EH) approaches, form a group of means to harvest energy, which due to scarcity of natural resources such as crude oil, and increasing pollution of the planet by some forms of energy production (such as polluting power plants), have began to gain importance and relevance in the production of clean energy. Increasingly there is awareness that every contribution that can save on energy from pollutant sources is welcome. As such, the use of personal devices, with the ability to produce a few milliwatt of power (a thousandth of the electric power needed for a common light bulb), coming from sources

The first approach that was developed in the study reported in this chapter was to verify the potential application of an emerging technology in a given product, evaluating the application of OLED technology in TV sets. Five specific aspects and five general aspects were selected that were considered crucial to the performance and the quality of this product. In the second case, this methodology was used to predict the feasibility of applying EH technology (which is an approach to self-powering of technological devices, a grouping of forms of energy harvesting) to the clothes pressing warm iron, and likewise five general and five specific aspects were chosen that were considered relevant for this product and that enable the full unfolding of the methodology. The third case of deployment of this methodology consisted in attempting to assess the feasibility of application of MEMS to the vacuum cleaner. Each of the five steps that make up this methodology will be explained in

captured by forms of micro energy harvesting, are aligned with this purpose.

creation of new designs.

for the world market (Salmon 2004).

this section, as well as their limitations.

falling production costs for these devices (Beeby et al. 2004).

this chapter presents the systematic methodology used so that it can be replicated in other product or technology contexts. This chapter is intended to present the methodologies developed during the study and to explain the course of each of the methodologies and the emergence of a categorization that is divided into three types.

The methodology that is meant to analyse the feasibility of applying an emerging technology in a given product was applied to three cases (Corda 2010), and is made up of five steps in order to analyze and compare the technologies. The intent of this methodology is to attempt to predict if the emergent technology is viable for application in a given product; as such, any technology that is incorporated, or has been incorporated, in a particular product is considered in the analysis and compared with the emerging technology that is intended to come to be incorporated in the same product. As a result of this methodology, one becomes aware of the performance of each selected technology in a given product, and gets to compare the performance of the product depending on the technology that enables the product features (specific and general) that were considered important for the analysis. This methodology is complemented with the use of another methodology, determining the causality of changes in technology on the external shape of the product.

The awareness of the strengths and weaknesses of each technology, in order to verify whether there is any viability in embedding an emerging technology in a product, is followed by the examination of the changes that have occurred by way of deployment of different technologies in the product. The methodology for determining the causality of changes caused by technology (changes in the external shape of the products analysed) also consists of five steps and connects the shape changes occurred in the products with the various technologies that incorporate each particular product.

It is important to provide a comprehensive perspective to support peers who intend to pursue the implementation of the two methods mentioned above, providing a (tripartite) categorization which is primarily a catalogue of the typological consequences of the influence of technology on the form of a product, as a result of applying the two methodologies presented in the process of technological product design.
