Readymade News

Design Review: Chocolate vs Q

It's tough at the top of the mobile phone pile. Motorola's hotly anticipated Q is getting slammed for its design, software and general dearth of cleverness while LG (remember them?) has a critical and commercial hit on their hands with the Chocolate.

Interestingly the Q tries to do a lot, thereby satisfying the requirements of this Infosyncworld poll but winds up doing too little. The Chocolate aims much lower and meets it's less-than-ambitious promise. The lesson to new product developers? Only offer what you can excel with because the rest will drag your product down.

It didn't hurt that the Chocolate paired an evocative name with mysterious looks and intriguing touchpad keys. In fact while Motorola wrings every last drop out of the Razr's halo, LG has been working to improve it's prevously anonymous phone designs without being the smallest, thinnest or fastest.

None of this is surprising considering LG's design team has won "Design Team of the Year 2006" at Red Dot.

Motorola must have thought the naming synergies with James Bond's gadget man Q were too good to pass up and to be fair it's a good name. On the other hand LG came out of nowhere with a luxurious sweet treat proving that emotion beats gadgetry any day.

The meaning of design

Is design meant to make things attractive or does it have a higher purpose? . See my comment on Niti Bhan's blog.

selling electricity back to suppliers

A development by Group 3 Properties, Clanwilliam on the Cape West Coast will use both solar power and electricity supplied by Eskom (South Africas main electricity supplier). The twist in this story is that the excess power generated from the solar panels will sold by the homeowners back to Eskom. The concept has already sparked interest from the government, including the Department of Mineral and Energy Affairs, which has set up a pilot low-income "alternative energy" village in Lucingweni in Transkei.

Design Leadership

Last night I had the privilege of speaking to the finalists of the Design Achiever's Awards. They're top design students from South Africa, selected for their potential to be future design leaders. After 4 intensive days of grooming and competition, one of them will be chosen as the top Design Achiever on 16 June. Good luck to them!