The HumanCentric mobile phone
Brian Chiarizia / Industrial Design / Mobile
Several months ago the industrial design team had an internal design competition with the intent of creating a “HumanCentric” mobile phone that we could then use to showcase some of our interaction + graphic + UI design skills. The designers brainstormed, sketched and argued as a group and then had one hour to render their vision for what our HC mobile phone should be. The final design that was selected is pictured above.
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HF Potpourri — the Human Factors Blog
[...] HF usability company HumanCentral held an internal competition to design an handset. I’d love more information on the [...]
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loki
That phone doesn’t seem particularly user centric, even accounting for the fact that it is hard to tell from the single picture, no follow up links, and no shots of the UI.
I would like to hear why they chose an iPhone clone design with two unmarked butons and two completely similar buttons as the hardware interface.
More informative posts please!
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Andrew Wirtanen
@loki
This was a competition by our industrial designers. It was not analyzed by myself or the human factors team, and the UI was never developed. As a company, we voted on several designs.
The two unmarked buttons serve as softkeys, which are traditionally used in mobile phone software. The idea here, I believe, is that the phone does not have to be a touch screen. I’ll ask the designers to comment further.
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Brian Chiarizia
@loki
The main purpose for designing this phone was not for the actual physical design of the hardware. It was created in order to give our Interaction & Graphic Designers a phone that we could use to showcase our Interaction Design work to potential clients without having to use someone else’s design.
We wanted to create a fairly simple and clean look that would not distract from the actual work that we would be presenting on screen. There are several traditional hard buttons that were incorporated into the design so that the user has the ability to control certain things on screen.
Hope this helps clarify the original intent of the design.
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