Part 4 of Rags To Riches. Check out the other parts by Luke Burton, Sonney Johal, Jamie Langton and Tom Frecknal for the full story

The item of design I’m looking at is the Nintendo DS Lite. The original DS (duel screen. fig1) was a very desirable piece of kit due to its duel screens, one of witch being a touch screen on the opportunities in unique game play this offered. However I didn’t buy one at first, not because of price but because I think it’s aesthetically unattractive and as a human I needed to find it attractive and cool. When they redesigned the DS into the DS Lite (fig2) it was the same functionally but was smaller and looked cooler. For this reason I then bought one but at a higher price than the original. This high lights the importance of good design and how it some times supersedes economic sense

Journal Task 1

The release of the Phone earlier this year sent shock waves through the technological community. It reached further and was more capable than anything else at the time. Apple didn't even refer to the Phone as just a phone, it was a media centre and contained enough gadgets that it even encroached on ipod territory and made the 8gig Ipod touch obsolete. Competitors have since caught up but like when Apple released the Ipod the trend has been set. In the future I see all of our gadgets merging into 1 piece of equipment (this has already started) and they will continue to get smaller. Soon no one will carry separate phone, camera and music player, everyone will own an item that is at least all three. But this is just the first step as other technologies catch up (like free city wide wireless internet coverage) the capabilities of media units will increase to the point that they will be like small computers capable of browsing the internet (the real one) sending and receiving e-mails and take photos and video of good enough quality to take advantage of new services like Youtube, all on the move and no longer tied to the desk top.

A step that I think the hardware will take that has been shown in some Sci-fi writing is the movement form internal data and software storage to it being stored on an external hub and the media unit accessing the data through the internet when and where it needs it. This would lead to almost unlimited storage space (or at least as much as you could afford) and the possibility of the units being used as mass storage devices.

The effect on society I envisage this having is one of speed and flexibility. With vast amounts of information easily and readily available and the ability to use it on the move, people will not only be better informed in most walks of life, they won’t have to stop to access the information that was previously available from fixed points.