Design insights from electronics wiz
Canadian Plastics
Wireless Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) are one of the electronics market's hottest products and Palm Inc. has become the world's leading manufacturer of PDAs, capturing 75 percent of the world ma...
Wireless Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) are one of the electronics market’s hottest products and Palm Inc. has become the world’s leading manufacturer of PDAs, capturing 75 percent of the world market. It has accomplished this largely as a result of being first to market with a line of products featuring strong, stylish design and brand identity, such as the Palm V and Palm m100 handhelds.
Palm’s director of design, Rich Gioscia, says design approaches are often organized around key words. In the case of the m100 handheld the key words are fun, friendly, durable and personalized. Housing material color, textures and style are chosen on the basis of the ability to convey the meaning of those key words.
As for trends, Gioscia says: “I find that designers can rarely predict trends. Usually when something is well-designed or well thought out it becomes a trend. It also may reflect something going on in the world. When the iMac came out, it became popular because it was totally different, now it has become a trend.”