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Philips: The Simplicity Event

I feel we are in a sci-fi movie, possibly the original 2001: A Space Odyssey. We are in the Today Bar, but the setting is decidedly futuristic: a circular tent-like structure, washed with an eerie blue light. Low, white stools and low tables are clustered around the perimeter. Waiters periodically waft through carrying trays of delicacies.

Arranged in display cases is an assortment of the latest Philips products: shavers, mini hi-fi’s, an electronic beer keg. Hence the name, the Today Bar. But we are about to see tomorrow’s products; creations that electronics giant Philips is promising will transform our lives. This is a building within a building, Hong Kong’s Asia World Expo, a gargantuan edifice near the airport in this busy, bustling, high-energy, future-focused city. Philips chose the venue to launch The Simplicity Event. New Products will encapsulate the company’s avowed aim to “sense and simplicity.”

It feels like a theater set, and sure enough, the show begins just after lunch when a movie starts playing on the Today Bar’s curving white walls.

We meet people stressed out by today’s hectic lifestyle: the busy executive just back from a business trip, a cyclist and a jogger trying to pack in a fitness program into their crowded day. Too busy, too stressed, life is all getting too much, too complex. Sound familiar?

Never fear, help is at hand. Abruptly, the curtains part and the whole structure begins to move. We are now in an open gallery space: a series of rooms, where we shall meet tomorrow’s citizens.

The people are “personas”, developed by Philips to represent real consumers. Originally, software consultants designed personas to try to make computer programs more intuitive and user-friendly. (One expert is Alan Cooper - see www.cooper.com - whose book, The Inmates Are Running the Asylum, lambasts over-complex computer technology.) It sounds like a good theory, although sadly few computer companies seem to have embraced it. How will Philips fare?

First we go to a room labeled Share Experience. Photo albums, memo pads, and storybooks of the future promise “spontaneous ways to share moments and mementos with family and friends”.

The Family Album is the next-generation Philip electronic photo-frame - a product that has won several design awards. Its touch sensitive screen lets you recapture not only pictures, but sounds as well. It is voice-activated, pans in and out, and the album can connect with another panel to make a panoramic image. “For all digital photography’s widespread acceptance,” says Philips, “-an estimated 100 billion digital images are recorded around the world each year - relatively few people make use of the technology available to display digital images online...more often than not, we confine our digital images to the rarely visited files and folders of a PC or laptop.”

In Touch is an electronic messaging board. It looks like a mirror. You can write on it with a special electronic pen, call up contacts, send off messages, and make recordings with an inbuilt video camera.

In Touch stretches the boundaries of the term “simplicity”. Although the aim might be to make life easier and keep things well-organized, the underlying technology is complex. I also wonder how easy it is to program.

In the next room, a woman is reading a story, “The Deep Dark Jungle”, to her daughter. The girl is shining what appears to be a cone-shaped flashlight at the wall. As her Mom reads the story, images - fish, crocodile, elephant - appear on the wall. It’s clever and cool and a whole lot of fun. But, I reckon a child’s imagination that conjures up a whole fantasy world out of black text on a white page is also pretty amazing.

A healthy lifestyle is a big concern for many of us. Many Philips concept products focus on this. We all worry about health, whether or not we are eating the right things, whether we are getting enough exercise. And we all want to relax more. The “Listen to your body” display showcases products that will give you the lowdown on your fitness status.

In Form looks like a footstool. It’s actually a scale, but it does more than just tell you your weight: there’s also Shape, a body-measuring tape. Both are connected to Reflect, another electronic mirror that provides a visual display. In Form measures your body shape, tells you whether you are adequately hydrated, and how to modify your diet and exercise program to meet your targets. Of course, it’s always discreet and diplomatic; you are not going to get a message saying, “You lazy slob! Get some exercise!”

While we might get obsessed with exercise, knowing how our bodies are faring (biofeedback) and what we can do to improve things can make a difference to our health and wellbeing - and stave off doctors’ visits. Biofeedback works, says Philips. “An effective aid to combating...ailments is the regular monitoring of various aspects of our body, because with the right information, we can take the correct preventive steps.”

Other products have more specific targets. For Jennifer, who is seeking to start a family, monitoring her fertility cycle with Body Cycle will increase her chances of conceiving, by helping her understand more precisely her biological clock and ovulation cycle.

Water Font is a sophisticated, but simple looking water filter for the kitchen. While we may enjoy pure drinkable tap water, millions of people are not so lucky. Water Font filters, sterilizes, mineralizes, and chills water, while also letting you mix in supplements for extra taste or nutrition. The tap glows purple to show the water is being sterilized by UV light, and turns red when the filter needs replacing. I would be surprised if this nifty looking product doesn’t arrive on the market very soon.

“ Care for your body” is one of the most futuristic looking displays. Therapeutic spa therapies aim to rejuvenate and revive you, using the most visible form of energy available: light.

Our bodies are governed by light and day, and different colors have an effect on our moods. Sunshine is a wall-mounted disk that glows softly, following natural light patterns. Need an energy burst in the middle of the afternoon? Move your arms in front of the disk and blue light will instantly revive you.

Another pocket-sized version energizes the tired traveler, while Rise and Shine lets you wake to a sunny day every day. For extreme northern parts of the globe (or Antarctica), where sunlight deprivation in the middle of the long dreary winter is a recognized health problem, added artificial sunshine will be a welcome boost.

Mother and daughter Catherine and Eileen both want to look after their skin. Look Good analyses their skin types, then zaps them with red and blue light. According to Philips, “red light therapy promotes gradual healing by increasing blood circulation and lymphatic activity”, while blue light therapy “generates singlet oxygen that attacks the bacteria that causes acne.”

Feel Good is a swinging floor lamp that soothes and rejuvenates using light therapy.

Not all treatments involve light. Soft Therapy is a wearable garment that eases sore muscles by combining massage and infrared treatment. It would certainly be popular for people suffering from sore backs and other aches and pains.

Enough relaxing and lolling about, it’s time to get fit and “Move your body”!

Lee likes to keep fit, but can find it a struggle. In Shape helps him out. The mirror tells him if he is standing with good posture - feet hip-width apart, shoulders down, neck in line, as we’re told in Pilates - or slouching. He picks up glowing exercise balls and lifts them, while a progress bar monitors his progress. Come on, just a few more...

Son Fu Ho loves drawing, but most parents wouldn’t want their son to draw all over the wall. With Drag and Draw - an electronic “Magic Wand” pencil and interactive wall, Fu Ho can. He draws a car - no, wait, it’s an ambulance - dips it in the magic paint pot for new colors and creates vibrant electronic wall art.

Fu Ho also enjoys Versa Tiles, interactive modular floor tiles for an electronic game of hopscotch. They remind me of all those movies where you have to tread on the right tile in the right sequence or else face doom. These are fun for kids of all ages.

OK, that’s enough exercise, now you can “Relax your mind”. In this display we are introduced to more light therapy, but its main aim is just to lift your mood. With the Chameleon light, for instance, you just touch a colored object to the sensor and the light takes on that color; it can be blue or pink or purple or bright orange. I am not sure how it would handle tartan.

Jill and Jeff are relaxing to music, though they each have different tastes. The Music Spectrum is a funky looking device. It’s a lamp that morphs into a swirly ovoid metallic speaker. Just tap the long bar-shaped remote control to choose your favorite music. Like the In Touch messaging board, it looks deceptively simple, but I wonder how easy it would be to program. Operation seems simple enough. And like many of most of these products, it looks fun.

You might expect to see all these technologies in use on the Starship Enterprise. Philips doesn’t have a “replicator” that juggles atoms to produce a chocolate milkshake or a Vulcan aperitif - yet. But it’s probably coming.

After a discussion session, we are ushered into the Tomorrow Bar. Here we see some more products that we can expect to see on the market in the next 12 months: the Wake Up light, lights that change color, ultra-violet lamps, and an ultra simple solar-powered LED light. Now, there’s an area that deserves more development.

There is also a clever, non-polluting, solid fuel-burning stove for developing countries. It’s five times more efficient than existing stoves without generating smog.

While some products are indeed simple, others are intended to make complex processes simpler for people to use and understand. One such is the MRI scanning room. Here we meet Olly the Elephant. A child can find the medical experience scary. A mock scanner showing how Olly the Elephant needs a scan to find out why he has a sore tummy, helps him cope. So does improving the atmosphere of the scanning rooms, by creating light patterns on the wall. The process was trialed at Chicago’s Lutheran General Hospital and received positive endorsement.

As well as consumer electronics and lighting, medical systems are an important and growing business area for Philips. With a growing elderly population, the focus on health is only certain to increase.

At another briefing we learn about other medical products in the pipeline that are likely to be commercially available. One is the home defibrillator, charger pack that senses if a person has suffered a heart attack, and if necessary, delivers an electric charge. It’s so simple even a child could use it.

The aim is to have it installed in schools and on public transportation, where it could save lives.

Other medical products include biosensor remote monitoring, so you can keep an eye on at-risk patients from afar; and a mobile clinical assistant - electronic medical records.

Telemedicine - delivering medical intervention via online communication - also has a big future, according to Wayne Spittle, VP and general manager of Philips Medical Systems Asia Pacific, and Seiji Kamijo - (Kamijo-San), CEO of Philips Electronics Japan.

Philips Healthcare executives also rave about something much simpler, the Philips Sonicare toothbrush. Nothing beats it, says David Hughes, regional manager for oral healthcare. He says it reaches parts of the mouth other toothbrushes can’t with a high-speed bristle tip motion of 31,000 movements per minute. The benefits alleviate its higher price by warding off gum disease and tooth decay.

One indication of the sheer scale of the Philips enterprise, other products focus on home entertainment. We see the latest big screen LCD TVs with ambilight - colored lights on three sides that change according to what is onscreen. Ambisound is an elegantly simple music system, while Ambistream allows you to hear music wirelessly in each room. AmBX brings more flashing lights and sound effects to gaming. Whether that stimulates or over-stimulates young minds is open to question. Perhaps they will need some color therapy to follow...

With all products, whether health, lifestyle, or entertainment focused, the emphasis is on simplicity. This has become a mantra for the company. CEO of Philips Consumer Electronics, Rudy Provoost, is bouyant. He says simplicity doesn’t mean reducing technology - it means making it easier to use and experience.

“ Simplicity is a state of mind: the burning desire to capture the essence of what consumers look for... their aspirations, emotions, feelings.”

How simple are these products, really? In practice, they should be easy for anyone to use; behind the sleek facade of the new products lurks complex engineering.

Still, I am pleased Mr. Provoost seems to like my trusty Leica rangefinder camera, going strong despite the fact that it is based on a design now half a century old.

Provoost also says that, despite its Dutch origins, there is really very little that is Dutch any more about the company (“I can say that, I’m Belgian,” he quips) - it is truly global.

Chief marketing officer Andrea Ragnetti says the concept products we have just seen are not nebulous ideas. “These are not products of the future, but concepts that could be on the market three years from now.”

Ragnetti talks about “bringing the power of humanity to technology, it means bringing it everywhere it matters, also in emerging markets.”

What roadblocks might there be on the way? Energy consumption is one. Here lighting will make a huge difference. This accounts for a massive part of Philips overall business. It now seems that incandescent light bulbs, the bright idea of Thomas Alva Edison over a century and a quarter ago, are about to be given the flick worldwide, and will be phased out. In their place will be fluorescent bulbs and LEDs (light emitting diodes). Sorry, if your present light fitting doesn’t take these bulbs, you will probably have to have it replaced.

And the problem with LEDs, for the moment at least, I understand is creating white light. Multi-colored light, no problem; basic white, that’s a little harder.

But the energy savings from new forms of lighting alone will be massive. I have read that lighting accounts for a huge proportion of the world’s energy consumption, and - as a downstream effect - it is also responsible for a large proportion of ozone-depleting CO2 and thus, climate change. The energy expended on lighting is apparently comparable to that expended on motor vehicles. Both fluorescents and LEDs consume a fraction of the energy needed by incandescent bulbs to produce the same amount of light.

Cost may be another limiting factor for some products: for example, the home defibrillator costs $1,600.

Yet another, which would affect those products that incorporate internet-based technology, such as the messaging board, is the slow take up and lackluster performance of broadband in some countries.

One participant found it surprising there was not more emphasis on cell phone technology at the event.

Are products marketing solutions looking for a problem, or real solutions for real needs? One journalist likened the event to an Apple presentation. Certainly, white is a fashion color, products are cool and sexy looking.

Philips believes its future is as a design-led company. It is convinced that its people-based R&D and the use of personas will deliver products that are of practical help to people, and also delight and enchant them.

For Stefano Marzano, CEO and chief creative director of Philips Design, this is what matters. The animated Italian with his signature brightly colored scarf wants to know what people like, what they don’t; for him, design is about emotion and enjoyment.

Marzano hates the term “consumers” (and also, surely, the even more depersonalized term “user”). “When you order a meal, the waiter doesn’t say ‘consume your meal’,” says Marzano, “He says, ‘Enjoy your meal.’ I prefer to say ‘enjoyers’, not ‘consumers’.”

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