The increasing importance on experiences within mobile interaction design has put the selection of colours, materials and form to the fore. However, the discussion of such aspects in design research has not yet accounted for how users themselves, and industry, pays attention to those aspects e.g. as forms of fashion and in relation to peoples’ complete outfits. Thus, we argue that fashion logics is part of users´ context in which they select colour and material. A neglect of understanding, and relating to, fashion dynamics might lead both to missed opportunities, as well as a decrease in the take up of new applications.
The emerging research on fashion delineates between fashion consumption and fashion production. Fashion is defined as public consumption through which individuals communicates the image they want to project to others. Fashion consumption is intimately linked to an ideology which favours change. It has strong inclination for what is new, i.e. neofilia. At the same time, it is inherently ambivalent. It balances between decency and decoration, as well as between a passion or repulsion for consumption. But fashion is also a production system. Previously, it was argued that fashion grew out of the dress styles of the rich and trickled down to the masses when industrial production made clothes cheap to manufacture. Today fashion theoreticians argue that the process through which fashion emerges is much more complex. It is argued that there exists a fashion system that early acts on various groups’ emerging tastes and styles. It uses these influences in its design and legitimates it through its institutions and mechanisms. The fashion system consists of its designer names, design houses, journalists, editors etc. It has its exhibitions, shows and journals. In all, this process turns clothes into fashion.
Mobile handset consumption and production share some of these features. On the consumption side we have seen how teenagers’ refers to their handset as being “in” our “out.” They recognize that the value of a mobile phone is given by the owner and her social network, and that it varies over time. We have also seen how first teenagers in Japan, and then at other places, decorate their devices in various ways. Mobile handset production does also explicit link itself with the fashion system. We have seen how several manufacturers release series of phones which are branded with fashion brands, such as Prada or Gucci. Other manufacturers release specific designer series, although refraining from using fashion brands. In general those series draw upon the fashion systems classic method of creating desire through evoking imagery of luxury and upper class life. There are also more marginal design series such as Motorola’s mobile phone which draws upon street style tattoo art. However, the industry has also come to recognize the importance of aesthetics in general, which is visible not least through the recent release of Apple’s iPhone.
Thus, we can suggest that at least some of the consumption of mobile hand-sets is a form of fashion consumption. The consumers buy change and news value, as well as orient to the form and aesthetics of the mobile phones as a way to publicly communicate an image they want to display to their social network. In that sense, they orient to the symbolic value of the phone rather than its potential inherent value. This is for example obvious in situation where the technical quality does not live up to promises, such as early camera phones, whereas the phone themselves still were sold to content consumers. This might be explained as fashion consumption. People buy the symbolic value of a camera phone. It brings them something new, which could be publicly consumed and gives them a specific image.
But there are also important differences between the fashion industry and the telecoms sector. The most obvious is the difference in the plasticity of their respective “design material.” The most remarkable feature of the fashion system is its possibility to create change and news value in a situation where there is very little innovation in neither the clothes nor its functionality. Mobile handsets are in constant change also in its functionality and in the technology per se. It is an industry that is changing in a more profound sense that fashion.
We suggest that teasing out the difference between consumption of mobile experiences as some sort of de facto products and symbolic fashion oriented experiences is of critical importance for the design oriented research in the mobile area.
Questions:
- In which ways do we need to account for fashion logics in mobile interaction design?
- In which ways can we understand purchase and use of mobile technology as a form of fashion consumption?
- Where and when do mobile designer overlap with fashion design and fashion industry?
- What are the unexplored fashion areas that would be interesting to combine with mobile design and where do they come from?
