I am Douglas Tarlow

smart design teamed up with intel to create the intel magic concept, which incorporates a phone, mp3 player and web browsing device all in one. the design team worked with consumers to develop a mobile device that met all their needs in single product. (via intel magic concept device)

It’s been my contention for a while now that the difference between ok, or even “good” design and “great” design is nuance. In my post about Henry Ford and needfinding, this was my argument.

Today, I see the same issue arise again, and I’d like to take just a moment to explain why this project is a failure in my mind, by comparing it to what we know about iPhone.

I think it can pretty much be summed up in one sentence:

“the design team worked with consumers to develop a mobile device that met all their needs in single product.”

This sentence screams mediocrity to me for 2 reasons:

1. It suggests to me a skin deep ethnographic study, in which the designers merely asked consumers, “what do you need”, instead of diving into their lives, developing a deep understanding of their true and latent needs, and developing from that point. Its like building a skyscraper with a weak foundation, you can sorta build a skyscraper, but it will never be as tall, and each level above will suffer from the weakness of the level below.

2. The development paradigm is uninspiring. They’re building a device that “incorporates” 3 different devices in one. They’re building one device which functions like a mediocre phone, mediocre mp3 player, and mediocre web device, but the thing that makes it special, they contend, is that it combines all three.

Now, take a look at how Apple talks about the iPhone. It is not an “all-in-one” device. They’re holding themselves to a higher standard. That is, if you took away any one feature of the iPhone (lets say just for the sake of argument that it does 3 things: (1) phone, (2) mp3 player (3) web browser), it would still be an excellent device. Apple doesn’t allow the kind of backward thinking employed in this design, every aspect of the iPhone is “best”. To sum up, I think Jobs said it best when he introduced it:

“Today, we are introducing three revolutionary products. The first is a wide-screen iPod with touch controls. The second is a revolutionary new mobile phone. And the third is a breakthrough Internet communications device”

“today Apple is going to reinvent the phone”

So what is the nuance in this case? In my opinion, its all in the approach, which in this case, was Smart’s excuse to be mediocre in some functions because the device has many.