The Internet of Things is changing the product design, disclosing the need of a critical, open-minded, ahead of its time approach to the object. The workshop Critical design: changing the innovative thinking organized by Arper was an example of a multidisciplinary way of thinking, typical in the history of the italian design, essential to foresee and anticipate the future.

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Quoting Henry Ford, Antonio Boso, Samsung Italia’s Head of Product Innovation, opened his speech at the workshop Critical design: changing the innovative thinking, analyzing the fact that even if we are leaving in a world where the consumer is considered the centre of the economical process, it is still up to the companies to guide and project the future.

However, every company, even a big one, by itself is not enough for this task, because “to foresee the future you need different ways of thinking and points of view”.
Every project needs nowadays an open dialogue, as the arch. Marco Piva underlined, and a fruitful interlocutor can really be the academic world. “Design is going toward a model of business”, professor Francesco Zurlo, coordinator of the Politecnico’s Product Design course, said. “The academic circles are becoming trustworthy observatory of the new trends and of the way of doing business. Today you need a multidisciplinary and “cross-thinking” approach: you can’t just do a lamp, for example: it has to be also soundproof, technological, connected,… We need to change our reality based on categories and compartments”.
Claudio Feltrin, Arper’s president, agreed with the analysis and added: “the italian critical approach to design can really become an asset. It is intuitive, artisanal, entrepreneurial, emotional and polyglot. The critical way of approaching design in fundamental to foresee and anticipate the future, receiving and translating the weak signal coming from the nowadays society”.
Text by Gabriele Masi.
Pictures by Luca Laversa.