IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - July 2015 - 98

A 1924 commercial radio set with its engineer.

which engineers of consumer products
practice today. In that era, radio was still
tightly connected to government and military applications. In both the United
States and in Europe, governments supported the development of radio and were
the major consumer of radio products.
Two or three more decades and another
world war would need to pass before the
consumer marketplace became the dominant force in electronic engineering.
By the mid-1960s, consumer engineers
were starting to articulate two aspects of
their work that differed from other forms of
electronic engineering. First, they noted
that they were dealing with a volatile marketplace that directly impacted their work.
While they were able to handle certain
aspects of that marketplace, they were
often stymied by the way that the market
identified some products as successful and
some as failures. The thing "we innovators
need most right now is some sort of a scientific formula," explained one senior
IEEE leader, "into which we can plug our
numbers and come out with an accurate
prediction as to which innovations are really for profit and which are for the birds."

MANUFACTURING MARKETS,
NOT PRODUCTS
If we stop at the consumer marketplace,
then we have to conclude that the products
of consumer electronics are little different
from other mass-produced artifacts, such
as clothing, makeup, or home furnishings.
However, most consumer electronic products also create markets for other kinds of
goods or services. The consumer
98 IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine

july 2015

electronics product that "you design has
relatively little value by itself," explained a
vice president of RCA laboratories, James
Hillier, in 1968. "It is, instead, the very
necessary means by which the consumer
gains access to a large technical and economic system which will provide him
with home entertainment services."
In other words, radios were not a
complete product. They needed an additional service to bring value to the customers. Engineers did not create that
additional service. Instead, they created a
market that brought that service to households. Radios connected consumers to
radio stations, television sets connected
them to television programs, and record
players connected them to musical artists.
The home needed information for
more than entertainment, Hillier argued.
It needed information for its operations,
the education of its members, and the
coordination of activities with other elements of society. Modern society was
building increasingly complex systems to
handle this information, Hillier noted.
The interface to these systems, he
claimed, was the products of consumer
electronics. The engineers of consumer
electronics, he concluded "must recognize we shall be developing other home
instruments which are again the consumer's interface with a much larger system."

MASTERING A COMPLEX WORLD
Of course, the creation of information systems is nothing new to electronics engineers. "Information handling provides the
market for essentially the total output of

the electronics industry," he admitted.
However, consumer goods were not the
same thing as industrial goods. Consumer
goods allowed individuals to master the
problem of complexity, to be able to participate in many different activities without
overburdening their ability to make choices or coordinate their schedule with others.
If consumer electronics can claim a
unique approach to engineering, it will
probably find that approach in a basic
idea behind Hillier's claims. The products of consumer electronics are sold in a
market for electronic hardware, and they
create a market for entertainment and
information services. This market for
entertainment and information not only
provides enjoyment to consumers but
also helps consumers manage their lives.

IS OUR DEFINTION OF
CE TOO NARROW?
I am aware that this definition of consumer electronics may dismiss some
products that may be dear to readers,
such as the LED sneakers that are
proudly worn by the five-year-old up the
street. She takes great delight in how
they flash as she walks. As far as I can
tell, these shoes do not connect her to a
bigger market, but I may be misreading
the five-year-old experience. The shoes
may be communicating messages to
other five-year-olds and coordinating
their lives, as much as the lives of small
children can claim to be coordinated.
Still, the notion of a dual market is
more of a framework than an engineering practice. It does not suggest a
departure from the standard approach of
electrical engineering that is as radical
as the one embraced by software engineers. Still, it suggests the direction in
which we need to go to understand the
nature of consumer-electronic engineering and the challenge that we will face
in trying to develop that understanding.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Alan Grier is an associate professor
of science and technology policy at George
Washington University. You can find this
and other columns in IEEE Xplore or on
iTunes Podcasts under the title "Errant
Hashtag." He is a Fellow of the IEEE.

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