Recently Matt Jones coined the term “Mujicomp” during a talk in Switzerland. He said that ubiquitous computing devices need to be “tasteful, simple, clear, clean, contemporary and affordable in order to be invited into the home” and that Mujicomp is a key factor in developing a bottom up strategy to building the sentient city.
I couldn’t agree more… but it does worry me a little.
I love the idea and there’s certainly a place in the world - my world even - for Mujicomp but I think we could be in danger of forgetting something.
To understand what (I think) he meant by Mujicomp it’s probably worth looking at the design ethos of Jasper Morrison and Naoto Fukosawa. Two designers that introduced the concept of Super Normal in 2007.
The Super Normal philosophy is that when something is designed perfectly it’s so easy for people to accept it that it effectively becomes part of the existing “normal” in their lives. It upgrades normal but doesn’t shout about it in order to pander to the designer’s ego. It simply dissolves into behaviour.
Naoto Fukosawa’s ”design dissolving into behaviour” quote is used in relation to ubicomp frequently and he’s famous for designing the classic Muji CD player so I can see why it’s logical to end up with Muji as the style benchmark for ubiquitous computing devices but I think we’re in danger of forgetting that the majority of people probably think Muji is posh, boring - or even “poncy”.
I have a feeling that Mujicomp is likely to only get invited into the homes of the affluent, educated, aspiring middle classes.
If we really want to design the sentient city from the bottom up we shouldn’t forget that the rest of the world aren’t designers. We should be thinking about those that probably think Billy Big Mouth Bass is something hilarious, and worthy of display on their wall.
This photo from Matt Jones’ Flickr is titled “Not Mujicomp” and he’s right. It certainly isn’t super normal for me but I think we shouldn’t discount the mileage we could get by creating things with such mass appeal.
I know the stuff in that photo is only destined to be landfill and would probably do more harm than good but we’re designers - we can work out how to be funny and sustainable at the same time, surely.
I definitely reckon I’d add funny to the list of attributes needed to get ubicomp invited into people’s homes.
