Gadgetory

whether we know it or not design is an integral part of our lives today it's not a battle of form and function it's a symbiotic relationship well most of us are quite familiar with the products that we own the design process behind them is still a bit of a mystery new deal design scotty ama is one such designer he's the mind behind the look of the Fitbit activity tracker and the Lytro camera a National Design Award recipient Amit has extensive experience with how these very personal products are conceptualized design and eventually end up in our hands so for us interesting topic about design most people look about look design as something that is exterior what we're dealing with the interior with the core functionality like how you wear it sizes of human body you know like a ergonomics arrangement of parts and only then we get to the perfection of the exterior surface could you maybe take us through the process of how you got from conception of the Fitbit and then to an actual product that so it's actually an amazing story so we started with the original Fitbit and at that time we wanted to rethink everything that related to was what was then called pedometers and we wanted to create something that is very friendly to the human body we actually thought a lot about women and how they carry things and for instance the fact that this was a clip was driven by that because women have much smaller pockets so we ended up with this innovative design that actually had a unique architecture with two nodes of electronics one has a battery that one to the rest and the latest generation is dealing with wrist foreign objects you could imagine five years from now each one of us will probably have about ten of these and two or three will be customized to some physical medical needs that we have two or three are basically gun recreational and two or three or maybe data-oriented identity authentication and so on now how much of the design is dictated by the Tronics it's a very interesting dialogue there's obviously core functionality that we're trying to get into the product but sometimes the human qualities are pushing back for instance discussion about user interface do you always need the biggest screen on the planet sometimes you just need to glance over and get a sense that you're more or less okay you walk 5,000 steps so let's talk about light row light row is the maybe another very recent and popular design that you guys did how much of this design was dictated by the technology itself the design of flight Row was driven by a constraint and constraint was actually the optics electro-optics so we decided to build on these and created something that is more of an extension of the lens so what you see outside is very much what you have inside its 2/3 a lens and about 1/3 the battery in the circuitry it's it's it's remarkable how much it doesn't look like a camera yeah in the traditional sense you know I mentioned earlier the contrarian view we had alternatives that were much more camera like the thing is that we brought this idea which basically is taken from a very simple gesture which is the kaleidoscope very human gesture and we had to prove a lot and you see a lot of models here a funny thing is that we still use these small mock-ups and they are actually very very informative in in decision-making so this one is made of like just a block of foam that's a block of foam with a tape and a piece of cardboard about this low-tech as you can yeah the next to it we jump to like 3d weighted and old CAD and all that both fit in lighter already is born of smaller companies working with large corporations can be difficult I'm it notes that these smaller teams have more of a passion for design it gives the designers more freedom to express themselves to their products you know the thing that I really respect both on Fitbit or light rail or the new structure these are companies that create product with a lot of integrity when you feel the product it feels like an Apple product doing things right and doing things with full intent to be perfect really really important how do you think Kickstarter and these crowdfunded kind of indie projects have changed the look of design and products for consumers so the one thing that they do they democratize the entry level for developers that allows people to bring ideas directly to the market this is structure by occipital and it's a three-dimensional imager in this case occipital is actually using it as more for marketing and funding tool rather than just funding basically opening up for community but there are people who basically start funding the company at Kickstarter with honesty I'm a little skeptic there's a limit to what you can do with this mode and the limits are both on the level of integrity of the whole venture you really need to deliver these are really consumers who are waiting for the product and so on but one thing to change it changed a very simple human problem somebody has a brilliant idea he or she doesn't get money to fund it he asks everyone to fund it and it works that's wonderful you