Philips Design Probes

The Philips Design Probes is a research programme that aims to envision future lifestyles based on insights gathered from five areas – politics, economics, culture, environmental issues and technology. Part of a wider strategy to improve the ‘innovation hit rate’ within the huge Philips conglomerate of businesses, the Design Probes have evolved into a range of beautifully executed and thought-provoking projects. Using cutting-edge materials and technologies, the Probes all have in common that they connect back to the human body in terms of our food, our clothes and how we interact with each other.




SKIN: Tattoo
Video courtesy of Philips Design

A lot of Philips’ work in this area focus on the skin as a medium for communication and interaction. Tattoos, scarification and piercings are some of the oldest and strongest forms of self-expression and identity, starting with cavemen right through to rock bands. Inspired by the current revival of tattoo culture, which has taken it into the mainstream, the Philips design team proposes an experimental coating technology that is activated by the wearer’s emotional response to touch and interaction. Applied directly to the body, the coating works as an augmentation of the flurry of emotions between two lovers.




SKIN: Dresses
Video courtesy of Philips Design

Further exploring the skin’s capacity to express emotions, the designers at Philips have developed an area they call ‘Soft Technology’. Using various electronic textiles and ‘intelligent’ technologies that sense the wearer’s emotional state, the SKIN: Dresses project shows how these materials can add new layers and nuances to human interaction.




FRACTAL: Living Jewelry
Image courtesy of Philips Design

Jewellery is another important form of personal expression, not least as an indicator of cultural belonging. Fractal: Living Jewelry uses artificial precious stones and pulsating LEDs, allowing designers to move away from traditional perceptions and taking jewellery into a much more layered territory where it can react to various cues. Depending on the sensors used, the jewellery can be an indicator of the wearer’s health, movement, excitement and proximity, as well as providing thermal protection, water-resistance and structural support.




FOOD: Home Farming
Image courtesy of Philips Design

Shifting the focus from the exterior to what we put inside the body, Philips’ FOOD probe is an extensive look at food preparation and ingredients. Not just a question of rich and poor, the geography and politics of food is becoming incredibly complex – to a point where food shortages and rising costs have become truly global issues. Against this background, efficient small-scale home cultivation of food seems like a sensible alternative. The Home Farming module in the image above contains a series of ‘mini-ecosystems’, stacked on top of each other and sharing water filtration, recycling of nutrients and sunlight.




FOOD: Food Creation
Image courtesy of Philips Design

In a nod towards Homaru Cantu, head chef at Moto, and Suwan Jayasinghe’s amazing work on electro-hydrodynamic jetting at University College London, Food Creation looks at the idea of a food printer. Loading the ink cartridges with nutrients, the printer would combine these to the desired shape and consistency much like the rapid prototyping machines that are available to product designers today.




SMELL: ‘Smell Blind Date’ by James Auger
Image courtesy of James Auger

Moving on to the olfactory sense, Philips supports the work of James Auger, a tutor at the Design Interactions course at London’s Royal College of Art. In a possible overstatement, the Philips website claims that ‘women can identify the most genetically suitable partner for reproduction purely on the basis of smelling a T-shirt’, but smell and taste is nevertheless a very strong emotional and physiological cue. The ‘Smell Blind Date’ project pictured above deals with what Auger refers to as a general deep-seated reluctance to engage with smells and the ‘potentially visceral, uncensored information’ they may deliver straight to the brain.

Please visit Philips Design for more information about the Design Probes.