The time has also come, he says, to shift some of the focus of innovation away from work and toward everyday life. The early users of digital devices are almost always business users, so product designers have a natural inclination to create and design products with the workplace in mind. But that tendency can make for bad design, especially when those products migrate beyond business. People put up with technical difficulties in their work lives that they would never tolerate in their personal lives. So forget "personal" computing, Thackara says, and embrace "social" computing. "As computing migrates from ugly boxes on our desks to something that suffuses everything around us, a new relationship will emerge between what's real and what's virtual, what's mental and what's material. There are few limits to the number of services that we could develop if we simply took an aspect of daily life and looked for ways to make it better."

Thackara offers a final principle for getting smarter about smart products, one that is rooted in the logic of digital technology itself: Pervasive computing contains the seeds of its own renewal, he argues. As software becomes a bigger and bigger element of even the most "hard" products (aircraft, bridges, buildings), human beings have a capacity to "melt" those products -- that is, to customize and connect them in ways that meet our needs more directly. But delivering on that capacity means inviting people to help shape products that they need. Don't create products for customers -- cocreate with them.

"Making a system easier to use for someone does not, for me, make that system better," Thackara says. "You bring a 'user experience' to life by designing with people, not for them. Users create knowledge, but only if we let them."

Rekha Balu (rbalu@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company senior writer. Contact John Thackara by email (john@thackara.com). You can learn more about Doors of Perception on the Web (www.doorsofperception.com).

Sidebar: Design Principles

John Thackara recently unveiled 10 "Articles of Association Between Design, Technology, and the People Formerly Known as Users." The principles are meant to capture his reservations about the rush to build a world of pervasive computing and to challenge designers to think differently about their priorities. Here are some of our favorites.

Article 1: We cherish the fact that people are innately curious, playful, and creative. Therefore, we suspect that technology will not go away: It's too much fun.

Article 2: We will deliver value to people -- and won't deliver people to systems. We will give priority to human agency, and we will not treat humans as "factors" in some bigger picture.

Article 3: We will not presume to design experiences for people -- but we will do so with them, if asked.

Article 4: We do not believe in "idiot-proof" technology -- because we are not idiots, and neither are you. We will use language with care, and will search for words that are less patronizing than "user" or "consumer."

Article 8: We will not pretend that things are simple when they are complex. We believe that, by acting within a system, you will probably improve it.

Article 9: We believe that place matters, and we will look after your place.

Article 10: We believe that both speed and time matter too -- but that sometimes you need more of one, and sometimes you need less. We will not fill up time with content.