Introductory remarks given at Device Design Day 2011

1. The PC has taken us a long way. They
were amazing. But it changes. Vested
interests are going to change. And, I
think we’ve embarked on that change.
Is it the iPad? Who knows? Will it be
next year or five years? … We like to talk
about the post-PC era, but when it really
starts to happen, it’s uncomfortable.
Steve Jobs
2 June 2010

2. Design in the
Post-PC Era
Dan Saffer
@odannyboy

3. The Memex (1945)
The Memex entirely warped how we think about “computers.”

4. One computer…
…for millions of people (1951)
…for thousands of people (1961)
…for dozens of people (1971)
…for a single person (1981)
…for home and one for work (1991)
…in your pocket and your car (2001)
…in every device imaginable (2011)
…in everything imaginable (2021)

5. 2000s
1970s 1980s

6. 2000s
1970s 1980s

7. 2000s
1970s 1980s

8. Marc Weiser’s
1991 Taxonomy
Tabs (e.g. mobile phones)
Pads (e.g. tablets)
Boards (coming soon?)
Missing: Dots (invisible objects), Boxes
(e.g. toasters), and Chests (e.g. stoves)

9. Today’s devices are...
…networked
...context-aware
...data-collecting and using
...sensor-powered
...often multi-purpose
...can change after they ship
This wasn’t true 60 years ago during the golden age of industrial design. Or 20 years ago
during the PC era. And probably not even five years ago. These were characteristics that we
thought only a PC could have, so blinded were we thinking about the Memex computers.

10. PHYSICAL
DEVICES SPACES TOYS
MOBILE
DESKTOP
APPS
WEB ROBOTS
Plate techtonic theory of post-PC era

11. DEVICES PHYSICAL
TOYS
SPACES
MOBILE
DESKTOP
APPS
WEB
ROBOTS
Internet
Plate techtonic theory of post-PC era

12. We shape our tools,
and thereafter our tools
shape us.
I’m going to put another thing out there in the back of your heads. MM said...
If that’s true, and I suspect it is, then when we make tools, we’re making a lot more than just
the object. We’re making ourselves.

13. What we’re creating
is a new kind
of consciousness—
ours: digitially-
distributed among
our devices.
With the internet glueing it all together. I know this sounds very San Francisco, so let’s back it
up with a little science.

14. “Readiness-at-Hand”
Heidegger is an asshole, but he had a good notion, and that was the idea of readiness-at-
hand.

15. “The tool isn’t separate
from you. It’s part of you.”
Franklin and Marshall Study of people using a computer mouse rigged to malfunction. The
resulting disruption in attention wasn’t superficial. Extended to the very roots of cognition.
“The person and the various parts of their brain and the mouse and the monitor are so tightly
intertwined that they’re just one thing,” said Anthony Chemero “The tool isn’t separate from

16. If that’s true, all the millions, billions of devices we make and will make aren’t just objects.
They aren’t just things. They are us, millions of bits of us. They allow us to do things we
couldn’t before, which as many have pointed out before, are almost magical. This post-PC
era era we’re in is magical. We can do things now that seemed like science fiction even 5

17. So when we’re designing devices, it’s not really about what we want the devices to be. It’s
about about what kind of people we want to be. Helpful, generous, exciting, thoughtful,
useful, beautiful. Those are the kinds of devices we need desperately in this, the post-PC era.
Please go design some.