Many people might think that the iPhone or the Nokia N95 each have anything a mobile user could ask for but a collection of students at The Royal College of Art have very different ideas.
Given the very simple design brief to “outperform, outsmart, and outmanoeuvre everything on the market” as part of a competition, the resultant designs are anything but typical. One of the winning designs (sponsored by 3) called ‘Vase’ is based on an open source software idea where the device comes with nothing installed and over time you choose and install the applications that you think you will need.
Then there was the Teiko, which was designed with children in mind. Its features include a tethered earpiece for listening to info at museums and zoos as well as a shock and water resistant shell. The final winner (pictured right) was a device called the Free Key featuring 40 assignable keys on a flexible LCD display for a handset that apparently would be “unique to each user… intuitive to use and hard to replace”.
Interesting stuff, and if you can hear a stampede, it’s just Nokia, Apple and Sony Ericsson’s recruitment teams racing down to the Royal College of Art. Hit the Jump for more shots of the winning designs.
Continue reading ‘Students design mobiles to humble industry leaders’
