Design and Telephones

I have a complicated relationship with design.  I am a big believer of the value of quality design.  Design can make a marketing piece.  Design can help communicate your marketing message, or get in the way of it.


I once worked with a designer who was very talented but very disconnected from the marketing process. She would create incredibly creative designs that in no way communicated the message we were trying to convey with the chart or literature she was working on.  We had many spirited "conversations," that often led to frustration on my part and anger on hers.

So I had this learned (and erroneous) feeling that design is a hinderence to success.  That design is all about form over function.

And then I read this article on Huffington Post about the Dutch designer, Dave Hakkens, that completely and forever changed my mind.  His design idea is brilliant on so many levels.

An exploded view of the Phoneblok

Hakkens has introduced the concept of Phonebloks.  The idea behind Phonebloks is that the various components of a cellular phone would plug into a central baseboard.  When someone wants to upgrade or a component no longer works, they only have to replace the corresponding block.  This eliminates the need for disposing a whole phone when one component stops working.  It allows for highly customizable and long lasting phones.  AND it looks like it would be fairly easy to do.  Watch the short video on phonebloks.com to get a better idea of this groundbreaking design Hakkens is promotiong.  . Hakkens is conducting a Thunderclap campaign to try to show the world of telephony that there is support for this concept.  I encourage you to add your voice to this campaign if you find this design as innovative, intriguing and refreshing as I do.

This month's issue of Fast Company is about design.  In his forward, Editor Robert Safian describes his evolution of thought about design.  It closely resembles mine.

"When I first arrived at Fast Company...I still had an archaic understanding of design.  Like many businesspeople, I equated design with tangential aesthetics and fleeting style trends.  I was taught by the Fast Company staff...that good design is really about problem solving, that it offers a more sophisticated perspective on modern business challenges than traditional spreadsheet-based approaches.  You could go to consulting firms like McKinsey and get an answer based on established business models.  Or you could go to one of the rising design firms such as Ideo, and maybe you'd come up with something never before seen."

Like the Phoneblok.

Related articles

• Phonebloks: the smartphone for the rest of your life

The Swiss Army Knife of Our Time

When I was a kid, after many years of begging, I finally got a present I deeply coveted...a Swiss Army Knife.  My Swiss Army Knife had a large blade and a small blade, a nail file, a screw driver, an awl, a scissors, a can opener (which I could never figure out), a genuine imitation ivory toothpick, a tweezers and a corkscrew.  What more could anyone want?  I think I only regularly used the big knife blade.

I wonder sometimes if smart phones aren't the Swiss Army Knives of our time.  They are sold with a seemingly endless array of features, most of which I suspect are rarely if ever used.  In the store, it is fun to think about using your phone to create business reports and watch movies, but eye strain and readily available, larger-screened options quickly prevail.  In the ad it sounds like a blast to be able to contact a bunch of friends at the same time, whether to plan a great social outing or to just guffaw over the latest TV sitcom.  At home, I realize that I don't have 10 friends that I want to call at the same time.  Most of them don't know and/or like each other and rarely do I do anything with that many of them at a time.

I expect that as smart phones become more and more de rigueur, manufacturers will need to come out with stripped down models.  There is a certain segment of the population who will appreciate, and buy, a phone that is designed to be, well, just a phone.

Once, in college, I used the corkscrew on my knife to open a bottle of wine.  (yes I still had the knife then and yes, I swear it was in college!). Similarly, once, I used the flashlight app on my phone, but even then it was just to show it off.  At least with the corkscrew I got to drink some bad wine!