Products that embrace and integrate an invisible, digital world are appearing around us in a rapid pace.This emerging type of products introduces a new dynamic between people, objects and the context oruse. The integration of embedded, pervasive and digital technologies in products imposes severalchallenges for the industrial designer. Designing in a world where an increasing amount of objects arebecoming digital and digitally connected opens up a lot of design possibilities on the one hand, butchallenges several established tools and methods industrial designers have been using in the past onthe other hand. In this paper, technology abstraction methods are used in a creative process in order toengage industrial design students (not necessarily technologically skilled) in the design of productsthat operate in a digitally connected world. We present a process that was evaluated during a weeklongworkshop. During this workshop, the potential of technology abstraction methods and how they canaid industrial designers to better communicate ideas that crossover between digital and non-digitalworlds were evaluated. The eventual goal of this process is to provide industrial design students,practitioners and/or educators with an open, yet structured platform complementary to establishedtools and methods. This in order to better define, prototype and communicate product and productinteractions that interweave digital elements into their context of use.