My project aimed at identifying a consumer segment - young people between 18 and 30 years - and designing a mobile phone for the segment, based on specific needs and desires. This phone is for a scenario three years from now hence, and offers something new and fresh.
Finding a new user segment in the market had enough scope in itself. Only knowing various interests, passions or personas of the users could create this segment. For instance, designing dedicated music phones for music lovers, and camera phones for candid photographers.
During the project, I conducted a survey amongst users and dealers. Analysis of the survey insights and development of concepts led to fixing a design direction which helped while sketching ideas for the already defined concept. A few ideas were selected and detailed. I next developed photo realistic renderings and virtual models, made presentation panels, show cased the product and made the respective scenario.
‘Peep’ happens to be a gesture based mobile phone with a very prominent negative space for navigation; this phone aims to rescue young professionals from their monotonous and mundane living. ‘Vivid’ is a phone which promotes experience based interaction where the gizmo type feel associated with the gadget has been replaced with a more natural human like quality.
The learning from the project lies in understanding the relationship between the gadget and the human. A phone connects two human beings; hence, the need of the hour is to add a human touch to this interaction between the user and the gadget. By equipping the gadget with more lively ways of interacting, not only does the interaction improve but the user also relates to the gadget a little more and in a better way.
