Posts Tagged: motorola

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21
Aug 08

Design and Politics at Motorola

Motorola’s got some really talented designers and research folks.

“The RAZR, a design victory as much as an engineering one, only came about due to the gumption of chief marketing office Geoffrey Frost. Following the RAZR’s overnight success, Moto commissioned an in-house team to research the company’s next step. Countless hours were spent pulling together focus-group studies and carrier feedback, but it was all for naught—the research was simply ignored by Motorola’s top brass. “They have this attitude of, ‘Well, I’ve built phones for 20 years, I know what I’m doing,” says a frustrated member of that team, who noted that once Frost died in 2005, there was no one left with the chops and political capital to route around Moto’s stick-in-the-mud managers.”

Link: Motorola Insider Blame Game: Engineers Shoved Designers Aside (gizmodo.com)

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7
Jan 08

Rokr E8, touchscreen with haptics and tactile targets

At last, the kind of touchscreen I’ve been waiting for – a full screen touch UI with haptic response and tactile finger targets. This is the kind of touchscreen device you could use with one hand. Look forward to seeing more developments in this direction.

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Link: First Video of Moto ROKR E8’s 100% Buttonless Touch Interface (gizmodo.com)
Link: Motorola Rokr E8 (motorola.com)

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23
Sep 07

Stephen Fry on mobile design

Stephen Fry (yes, comic actor of Blackadder, A Bit of Fry and Laurie amongst other things) has a passion for mobile devices, it seems.

“Let’s go back to houses. The sixties taught us, surely, that architectural design, commercial and domestic, is not an extra. The office you work in every day, the house you live in every day, they are more than the sum of their functions. We know that sick building syndrome is real, and we know what an insult to the human spirit were some of the monstrosities constructed in past decades. An office with strip lighting, drab carpets, vile partitions and dull furniture and fittings is unacceptable these days, as much perhaps because of the poor productivity it engenders as the assault on dignity it represents. Well, computers and SmartPhones are no less environments: to say “well my WinMob device does all that your iPhone can do” is like saying my Barratt home has got the same number of bedrooms as your Georgian watermill, it’s got a kitchen too, and a bathroom.” … I accept that price is an issue here; if budget is a consideration then you’ll have to forgive me, I’m writing from the privileged position of being able to indulge my taste for these objects. But who can deny that design really matters? Or that good design need not be more expensive? We spend our lives inside the virtual environment of digital platforms – why should a faceless, graceless, styleless nerd or a greedy hog of a corporate twat deny us simplicity, beauty, grace, fun, sexiness, delight, imagination and creative energy in our digital lives?...”

Link: Device and Desires (stephenfry.com)

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2
Apr 07

Q hits and misses

Adam Richardson writes about how Motorola’s Q marries great industrial design with less than great software.

“It’s a beautiful product, but one that is saddled with a clunky interface. I haven’t thought this well enough through yet to know if it’s a universal law, but it seems like experience design is like a chain, it’s only as good as its weakest link. The weaknesses only highlight how close the strengths have come to achieving greatness. Unfortunately it appears the Q has missed nirvana.”

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Link: Motorola Q: Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory (richardsona.squarespace.com)

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26
Mar 07

The story of the Dynatac

Stuart Wolpin writes the story of how Motorola created the first handheld cellular phone, the Dynatac.

“A year earlier no one had even been considering the development of a hand-held portable phone. The idea of a mobile telephone was not new; car phones had been around in fairly small numbers for about a quarter-century. But each car-phone function required its own mass of transistors, wires, tubes, switches, resonators, and filters. While car phones had gotten smaller over time, they still required a 40-pound, coffeetable-size transceiver that was called portable only because it could be mounted in a car’s trunk.

“Could such a behemoth be turned into something light enough to carry around? In an age of satellite communication, trips to the moon, and the seeming miracle of the pocket calculator, it was assumed that any engineering challenge would eventually be overcome. But even if it was possible, so what? Why would anyone pay a monthly subscription fee and hefty per-call charges when 10-cents-a-call phone booths were everywhere?”

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Link: Hold the Phone (americanheritage.com)

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30
Sep 06

Literacy and voice prompts

Jan Chipchase wrote about MotoFone recently:

“The Motofone is being marketed as a device that amongst other things aspires to “help bridge literacy gaps” including voice prompts to “guide the user quickly and easily through menu navigation, messaging and other functions”. It’s good to see illiteracy raised to the point where it becomes a marketing feature but I’m also highly aware of the non-trivial challenges that need to be overcome if they are to genuinely meet their stated aims.”

The two key questions Jan raises are:

  • How do voice prompts help deal with complex functionality?
  • Is the voice interface in the language most useful to illiterate phone users?

    I’ve been very closely involved with the design of MotoFone project, and can respond positively to these two questions. First, functionality is only complex when it’s made to be complex (focus on core functions only and a lot of these problems go away). Second, there’s been a concerted effort to make sure the MotoFone speaks the customers’ language.

    Jan’s correct in claiming that this is a non-trivial task, and I’m sure that with MotoFone we’ve at least overcome some of the challenges that will help make it easier for the unconnected to join the mobile fray.

    Link: Literacy, Communication, Design II (janchipchase.com)

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28
Jul 06

Phone for the unconnected

Motorola has pulled the curtains off the MotoFone, a product I’ve had the privilege of working on with a great team of people. It’s a bold project: connecting the unconnected in developing countries, and it’s very exciting to see it so close to shipping. I really hope that it can make a difference to people’s lives.

Link: MotoFone (motorola.com)

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6
Apr 06

Inside and outside mobile devices

“What I am actually trying to do is point out a problem that currently hinders the experiential qualities of mobile handsets in general: their shells and their ghosts often tell different stories, with hardware currently playing the lion’s share when it comes to innovation and sheer commercial appeal.”

Link: Shells. Ghosts. (freegorifero.com)

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12
Mar 06

An interview with Motorola’s director of design

Jim Wicks talks about the changing design culture at Motorola.

“So, I don’t see the customer experience as a vast amount of things. It’s about how you feel about your device; it’s about the physical piece; it’s about the software in your fist; it’s about the connectivity to services. These things make up the whole experience, and the desirability of the physical device is a big piece of that. We found that an operator—meaning a wireless company—can drive more people to the new devices it offers because of the new services on these devices. But people start by immediately liking what they see, and then they start to grow into the new services and realize all these other aspects of the experience.”

Link: Weaving Design into Motorola’s Fabric (id.iit.edu)