The rise of digital distribution platforms is creating a range of opportunities for all types of media companies to expand their operations and their contacts with customers. Unfortunately, many media companies are approaching digital platforms as if they were just another place in which to make their offline product available or just another part of their portfolios of operations.
The strategic decisions and needs facing firms today require media companies to go back to the basics of business development and marketing strategy and not to think of marketing in narrow terms of advertising, promotion, and personal marketing.
Digitalization is creating a new type of society based on networks that alters the roles and potential of individuals, work, companies, and nations. This new environment requires that media companies take an entirely new look at their roles and functions, the value of their products and services, and their relationships with customers.
Technological products have become central to the ways in which many people communicate with others, conduct business and spend their leisure time. Despite their prevalence and significance in people's lives, these devices are often perceived to be highly replaceable. From a sustainability perspective, there is value in creating technological products with meaning directly associated with their materiality to reduce the rate of product consumption. We set out to explore the potential for design to promote the formation of product attachment by creating technological devices with meaningful materiality, closely integrating the physical form with the significance of its digital contents. We used the life stories and ongoing input of our intended user as inspiration for the creation of Melo, a bespoke music player. The evaluation and critical reflection of our design process and resulting artifact are used to propose a design strategy for promoting product attachment within the growing sector of technological devices.
Devices such as phones, laptops and tablets have become central to the ways in which many people communicate with others, conduct business and spend their leisure time. This type of product uniquely contains both physical and digital components that affect how they are perceived and valued by users. Technological possessions were frequently perceived as systems of products rather than as singular devices. We identified several design opportunities for materializing the associations ascribed to the digital information contained within technological products to more meaningfully integrate their physical and digital components.