Investigating an “Internet of Hybrid Products”: Assembling Products, Interactions, Services, and Networks through Design

This article takes up the relations between products, people, and the Internet. Our investigation is set in the context of the emergence of networked and service-driven physical products. The article builds upon the curation and design of an exhibition that pulls together recent hybrids composed of physical objects as well as digital things and networked services. Through investigating this selection of both prototypical and widely available consumer products, we seek to understand how the previously-separate domains of product, interaction, and service design might be combined in order to design and research new hybrid products, services, and interactions. Taken together, these investigations point toward an “Internet of Hybrid Products” that draws heavily from social practices in networked media that is already highly branded and in urgent need of attention from design research.