ID Chronicles

During our discussion last class, what struck me about the case studies we considered, is that we did not ask what the problem behind the facade was. For example, we talked about the vibrator origins as a medical device, but we did not discuss why women had to let sexual problems be addressed by a doctor, and not their lover. To me the problem vibrators were solving is not that of hysteria, as suggested, but of social stigma. It was a way in which a product that was needed in society found an excepted usage through a medical persona. The product avoided a change in sexuality among women when it first came into use. Later, as women's sexuality became more liberated people began to accept that it was a part of the world and that is was a product in use outside of the medical community.

There have been multitudes of products that have followed a similar design path. These are products that are needed in society, that find a way to avoid social taboos, and in turn create them.

Take for example the rubber bracelets that Madonna, and many of her peers, wore throughout the eighties. At that time they were a sexual accessory that existed in a post sexual revolution era. Sexuality had just exploded in the late 60s and 70s, teens and adults alike had discovered that if they were more open about what happens behind closed doors, they could have a more fulfilled sexual agenda, and there for a more fulfilled life. By time the eighties came along people started to peak, sexuality was at an all time high, and people were fighting back. The HIV/AIDS epidemic, and the realization of STDs began to surface, and the reaction was the culture shift in the nineties, which in the arts you can see as a reversion to innocence, but also bitterness. Singers, pop idols, and rock stars changed their tune. As we entered the nineties, sexuality went back underground quite a bit. Coming from a time when Times Square was a Porn Mecca, filled wall to wall with $.10 peep shows, to a time when Porn was seen as something deviant. This same shift affected products as well.

Consider again the rubber bracelets, in the 80s they were considered to be just another cheap accessory, you could buy at the local mall, and look like your favorite pop star. They became increasingly popular among school kids in middle and high school because they were incredibly cheap, so there was somewhat of a market overload, everyone had them. Because they came with so much visual, and sensory baggage they became a social status kind of product, they kind of thing the cool kids were wearing. As the sexual revolution hit its breaking point, the bracelets became, along many other products, a way for teens to express they sexual prowess just as their idols do on T.V. Kids would wear the bracelets to school and use them to either count how many sexual partners they had, and display on their wrist, or invite people to rip one of suggesting that they want to be a potential sexual partner. These practices became widely popular, and schools and parents at a time when sexuality was becoming something with a lot more consequences started to take action. Kids were denied the right to wear these bracelets to school, it was example of an attempt to micro-manage an entire change in society. Stigma was placed on anyone that did wear them, and they were seen as deviant.

The life span of the bracelets, currently near extinction, is curious, and interesting, and as I have described, one that was constructed throughout history. Its example of a product that has developed meaning based solely on its role in modern American society. This approach to product design is something that deserves understanding, and can provide designers with a voice of reason.