C haptEr 9 design Environments and systems
332
economic carrying capacity. Increased multifunctionality that can
reduce the total number of components needed to achieve overall
functionalities can lead to similar results but also has the impact of
reducing complexities of supporting systems, since fewer elements
need to be interconnected.
In the product design sphere, smallness coupled with higher performance has yielded products that have greatly improved usability
and user appeal. The obvious example here is the devices we still
usually call cell phones but that are often actually more sophisticated devices serving multiple functions that include communications but go far beyond—and all in beautifully designed objects
that we carry with us. It is obvious that increases in performance
coupled with decreasing sizes of functional components made
these devices possible and helped usher in a new era in societal
interactions. There are further expected trends in the many kinds
of personalized devices that now directly accompany us or are
expected to accompany us in the future, including further increases
in multifunctionalities in areas that go beyond communications,
simple work assists, and entertainment and into such spheres as
personal health monitoring and assistants for mitigating impairments. The development of nanosized biosensors is expected to
lead to personal alert systems for everything from airborne pollution levels that adversely affect many people in our society to
biohazard events caused by terrorists. For some functional applications, the idea of even embedding such devices within our bodies
has great appeal to many, albeit certainly not all. Here we might
have nanosized disease- or condition-specific monitoring and
control or drug-delivery implants for medical or health applications (see Chapter 11).
Trends toward smallness, improved performance, and multifunctionality as well as reduced costs in enabling components are seen
in many other kinds of products already on the market or expected
to soon be there, including everything from kitchen appliances to
cameras. It is important to remember that for many of these devices,
the question of final product size is dependent on many factors.
Could devices such as cell phones and others in common use be
made even smaller? From the point of view of fundamental enabling technologies (such as processing units, memory), the answer
is surely a well-known yes. User interaction considerations, however,
often require that they have certain critical minimum dimensions
that are often near current sizes. (See Chapter 3 for further discussion of this point.) Still, for many supporting or embedded components such as sensors, the smaller, the better.
332
economic carrying capacity. Increased multifunctionality that can
reduce the total number of components needed to achieve overall
functionalities can lead to similar results but also has the impact of
reducing complexities of supporting systems, since fewer elements
need to be interconnected.
In the product design sphere, smallness coupled with higher performance has yielded products that have greatly improved usability
and user appeal. The obvious example here is the devices we still
usually call cell phones but that are often actually more sophisticated devices serving multiple functions that include communications but go far beyond—and all in beautifully designed objects
that we carry with us. It is obvious that increases in performance
coupled with decreasing sizes of functional components made
these devices possible and helped usher in a new era in societal
interactions. There are further expected trends in the many kinds
of personalized devices that now directly accompany us or are
expected to accompany us in the future, including further increases
in multifunctionalities in areas that go beyond communications,
simple work assists, and entertainment and into such spheres as
personal health monitoring and assistants for mitigating impairments. The development of nanosized biosensors is expected to
lead to personal alert systems for everything from airborne pollution levels that adversely affect many people in our society to
biohazard events caused by terrorists. For some functional applications, the idea of even embedding such devices within our bodies
has great appeal to many, albeit certainly not all. Here we might
have nanosized disease- or condition-specific monitoring and
control or drug-delivery implants for medical or health applications (see Chapter 11).
Trends toward smallness, improved performance, and multifunctionality as well as reduced costs in enabling components are seen
in many other kinds of products already on the market or expected
to soon be there, including everything from kitchen appliances to
cameras. It is important to remember that for many of these devices,
the question of final product size is dependent on many factors.
Could devices such as cell phones and others in common use be
made even smaller? From the point of view of fundamental enabling technologies (such as processing units, memory), the answer
is surely a well-known yes. User interaction considerations, however,
often require that they have certain critical minimum dimensions
that are often near current sizes. (See Chapter 3 for further discussion of this point.) Still, for many supporting or embedded components such as sensors, the smaller, the better.