Electronics Designers Struggle With Form, Function and Obsolescence

Sorry, Steve Jobs, I owe you a new iPhone.

For the past few weeks I’ve been using a loaner iPhone 4 from Apple. As most reviewers have pointed out, the silky smooth glass front and back makes the phone an object that is a pleasure to hold.

[The result of movable object (iPhone) meeting immovable object (pavement) Nick Bilton/The New York Times]

But not to drop. An object made of glass surely needs protection, right, which is why I added a nice blue bumper to the edge of the iPhone.

I thought it would work beautifully until I dropped my iPhone on the concrete on Tuesday evening. The phone’s glass became a Humpty Dumpty look-a-like.

I’m still trying to figure out whose fault it was? Of course, I’m mostly to blame for being clumsy and dropping the phone. But is it also Apple’s fault for creating a gadget that breaks so easily?

Before the Apple fanboys tear me to shreds, this is way beyond just Apple. It’s a question for the entire electronics industry: Have designers of electronics elevated form above function? Most mobile phones, laptops, tablets and the like are just not designed to be dropped or handled too aggressively.

Max Burton, executive creative director for Frog Design, said in a phone interview that Apple and other electronics companies offer a product that makes sense for consumers to slip in their pockets, looks beautiful and isn’t too cumbersome.

Mr. Burton said he’s worked on product designs for the military where his team was asked to make something “shatterproof, waterproof and bombproof and the products just kept growing so much that it wouldn’t be acceptable to a consumer audience.” That doesn’t fly with consumers.

The debate over form follows function can be traced back to the 1890s. Later Walter Gropius, a German architect, founded the Bauhaus School and movement, which embraced “form follows function” although the two concepts standing in opposition has driven arguments in the design world for decades.

But if there’s any industry that has adopted a form over function mantra, it’s the digital products we own today, especially those that begin with a lower-case i.

So is the fact that we all buy gadgets and then have to spend additional money to buy protective coverings for our electronics speaks poorly of the design of these products?

Jason Brush, executive vice president of user experience design for Schematic, a branding and design agency, noted in an interview that the fragility of electronics today might not lay in the form and function debate, but rather that gadgets are not meant to be long lasting.

“If you purchased a Leica Camera a hundred years ago it would still work today. It was bullet proof,” he said, “But electronics today are not built with permanence in mind.”

Mr. Brush said that electronics are now built as fashionable objects that serve a functional purpose. “When things are made to look beautiful versus being designed to last for 100 years, the products form can look vastly different,” he said.

In some instances technology might find solutions that don’t take away from the look of an object, while
adding more protection. This week for example, Corning, a glass manufacturer, said it would begin manufacturing Gorilla Glass, a type of glass that was developed in the 1960s and is extremely strong and durable.

But it’s going to be a long time before our iPhones have a lifespan of an old Leica, even with a bumper protector around its edges.

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