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Former HTC designer Scott Croyle has left Razer's Nextbit
We haven't yet seen Razer's debut smartphone, but the team behind it is bidding farewell to an exec that played a crucial role back in its early days. Scott Croyle, who quit HTC as the Senior Vice President of Design, has left Nextbit as of September after a three-year run. His new gig? Going back to his design consultancy roots with the formation of Attic, a San Francisco-based studio covering hard goods (which obviously include consumer electronics), soft goods and furniture. Croyle is joined by former One & Co colleague Jony Ive Daniel Hundt, who was the lead designer of the Incredible, Incredible 2, Desire 816, Desire 820 and more. Prior to HTC's acquisition, One & Co was also known for designing Microsoft's Arc Keyboard plus Arc Mouse, as well as the original Amazon Kindle.
The designer behind the Toyota Concept-i talks about being friends with a car
A lot of concept cars are coming out of CES. Most of them are geared toward making the passenger experience more relaxing. Toyota wants riders to also be at ease as well, but it also wants the driver to have a good time. Toyota worked with the design Studio Calty to create the car shown at CES. Chief designer Ian Cartabiano chatted with us about what his team hoped to accomplish with the vehicle's interior and what it means for people who love to drive. Interview edited for length and clarity
Intel wearables show models' stress levels on Paris runway
Intel's continuing experiment with wearables is getting serious. The company teamed up with British designer Hussein Chalayan to create smart glasses and belts for five models in Chalayan's Spring/Summer 2017 show today. The devices are powered by Intel's Curie module for wearables, though neither company has expressed plans for actually making these accessories widely available.
PowerPoint spruces up your presentation using image recognition
If you've ever slapped together a PowerPoint presentation at the last minute, Microsoft has an Office 2016 feature called Designer that may save your bacon. It worked with graphics pros to build about 12,000 "blueprint" design templates in total. All you have to do is select an image, and it will use the cloud "to analyze and identify the most compelling portion of your images," and build an appropriate design. For instance, it can zoom in on the tomatoes or peas (above) to build a theme, or avoid busy overlay images altogether if you have lots of charts. Once you've picked an appropriate blueprint, you just need to fill it in with your content.
Apple Watch now works with August's designer smart lock
Unlocking a door with your smartphone feels like the future, but you still have to fish something out of your pocket to do it. If you happen to own one of the Yves Behar designed August smart locks, however, you can open it with something on your wrist -- an Apple Watch. You can now lock and unlock the device "with just a swipe and a tap" on a Watch, according to August. In addition, you can view a log of who has come and gone, and get a notification when someone locks or unlocks your door.
HTC's former lead designer joins Fitbit
If you've been following the news of HTC's former chief smartphone designer Jonah Becker, we finally have an update regarding his latest whereabouts. As of today, Becker is Fitbit's VP of Industrial Design -- a newly created position at the fitness tracking specialist, interestingly enough. This announcement comes just 11 days after Becker's departure from the Taiwanese mobile giant, who has since appointed Daniel Hundt as his successor, while Claude Zellweger continues to lead design efforts for the company's other connected products. Becker's predecessor, Scott Croyle, is currently VP Product and Design at Nextbit (and we're sensing a trend with company names here).
HTC's lead designer leaves after less than a year
For a tech company that places so much emphasis on design, we can't help but think something's up when one of the key designers leaves. Today, we bring you the sad news that HTC's VP of Industrial Design, Jonah Becker, has announced his departure on Twitter. To our surprise, that's less than a year after he picked up from where his predecessor Scott Croyle left off. With Croyle and Becker gone, this leaves Claude Zellweger the last remaining principal of One & Co -- the design firm that HTC acquired back in late 2008 -- running the design team at the smartphone company. According to a statement from HTC, Becker has been succeeded by Creative Director Daniel Hundt, who happens to look a lot like Apple's Jony Ive. Hundt's focus is on smartphones while Zellweger continues to work on "connected products," which include the RE Vive and the RE Camera.
Immersion prototype headset tracks gamer rage, ramps up difficulty
Seattle-based designer Sam Matson developed a headset that tracks "gamer rage" and adjusts a custom game's difficulty to compensate for it. Dubbed "Immersion," Matson's headset uses an optical sensor that reads "minute color changes in the user's ear tissue to approximate a pulse." Matson's prototype headset includes both audio input and output channels in addition to the heart rate monitor, relaying information via bluetooth to a hacked Xbox 360 controller. He developed a custom shooter game using Unity that ramps up the difficulty as the player's heart race increases, encouraging the player to stay cool and collected. The Immersion headset isn't a commercially available product, and it's uncertain if it ever will be, but Matson does offer a few glances at the prototype model on his website.
Sony's Jun Katsunuma on the inspiration for Xperia Z Ultra's design
After the Xperia Z Ultra's launch event in both London and Shanghai, we had a brief chance to talk to Sony's Product Design Director, Jun Katsunuma, who was present in the latter city. Jun's been responsible for Sony's mobile devices since the Xperia S days, so the transition to the Xperia Z's double-glass design was also under his watch. That said, the newer Xperia Z Ultra isn't simply just an enlarged version of its smaller sibling, as we found out straight from the horse's mouth.
Designers react to iOS 7
Yesterday's announcement of iOS 7 brought a number of responses -- many negative, some positive -- about the new look and feel of the mobile operating system. Om Malik of GigaOM decided to gauge reaction to the changes that are coming this fall by asking his Twitter friends. The negative side of the responses seemed to come mostly from designers: @jbrewer -- "You gotta wonder if they took their phones outside and looked at all that thin-lined icon + transparency stuff in the sunlight" @samin -- "An interesting observation: designers who have actually done any mobile OS design work really seem to dislike iOS 7." @mg -- "Am I alone in thinking the iOS 7 home screen icons look ugly, poorly balanced, and of an unattractive color palate (sic)?" Tom Coates of Product Club and formerly of both BBC and Yahoo's Brickhouse was the most vocal: At least in part because it looks so much like wireframes with placeholders for things. Bit like a webpage with Times New Roman....It's cramped in places, childish and garish in others, icons blend in with the background. And some of the design fetishes it has are as egregious if not worse than ios6 - frosted glass, fake depth, sliders with shadows. There are many good things about it too. Don't get me wrong. App switcher is nice, etc. Interaction wise it looks and feels solid. There were those designers who like the new look, and here is a sampling of their responses: @yocline -- "The good news: the new UX is a big improvement and the UI skin can be iterated and polished over time" @mike_FTW -- "I love it" and later: It's a breath of fresh air. Where was Apple going with the current crap? This opens up all manner of possibilities. I'm excited because it's new. And fresh. The Forstall crap went to its logical conclusion. Any design system that can no longer be extended is death. The new stuff is a fresh start. Eventually it'll die too. But right now I'm excited about how it can grow and be extended. It's not perfect. But, as a designer, that excites me. As a consumer? I dunno. There's more in the GigaOM post, and I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot more responses from developers as they get the beta OS loaded on their devices.
Diablo 3's missing runestones found at GDC
If you've followed Diablo 3's development for a long time, you might remember the idea of Runestones. They were meant to be actual in-game items that could supplement character abilities in various ways, such as adding a fire attack to a melee hit, or doubling the power of a spell for free. When the game arrived last year, the Runestone system was nowhere to be seen, replaced by the controversial Skill Rune system. So where did those Runestones go? Diablo 3's technical designer Wyatt Cheng said during a talk at GDC that they're still around, in one form or another.The Runestone system was originally created to add flexibility to character skills, and to give players a chance to experiment and play around with new abilities after they had gained them through leveling up. The original idea had ten different effects that could be added to various abilities, including striking, lethality, efficiency, life-stealing, poison, slowing and so on. But ten was too many, Blizzard decided, and they opted to boil them down into five different stone types (Crimson, Obsidian, Indigo, Golden and Alabaster) that would each affect skills in a few different ways.Cheng said having actual stones in the inventory worked in a few different ways. It gave the system a sense of discovery, as players enjoyed seeing which stones granted certain effects, and it accomplished the original goal of allowing players to experiment with customization. Managing the stones in the game's inventory was a "nightmare," according to Cheng, and player expectations didn't always match what the stones actually provided.In the end, the team went with the existing Skill Rune system, which allowed Blizzard to give specific skill and stone combinations more "flavorful names," and let the team make sure that the added effects were appropriate for the skills they matched. But Cheng said the effects were still in there: Some runes still slow opponents or add more damage to attacks, and those were the effects originally conferred by the stones of Indigo and Crimson.
Tilt to Live getting a sequel and it's Redonkulous
One Man Left Studios is most recently known for its great social Outwitters title, but of course the two-man developer team (made up of Alex Okafor and Adam Stewart) is best known for the popular Tilt to Live, a relatively early iOS hit. And now the team is going back to its history, and starting work on Tilt to Live 2, according to the company's official blog. The new game is called Tilt to Live 2: Redonkulous, and is due out later on this year. Like the first title (which had you tilting a triangle around to try and avoid all sorts of incoming enemy shapes), there will undoubtedly be plenty of tilting action to go around. One Man Left promises new weapons, updated graphics and an all-new scoring system for the sequel, and we're sure they'll bring some of that Outwitters multiplayer experience to the game, too, as they also "plan on rubbing your friends' highscores in your face a little harder." Well the game sounded like fun, right up until that last bit. At any rate, we'll look forward to Tilt to Live 2 -- if we see One Man Left around GDC next week, maybe they'll let us in on any other new plans.
Tomb Raider 360 controller is rough, tumble, rumbles
You know how they make those designer jeans that look like you've owned 'em for 30 years, despite being brand new and insanely expensive? Well, this is like that, but for an Xbox 360.Launching in March, the official Tomb Raider Limited Edition Wireless Controller will cost $60 and come bundled with a code for exclusive character DLC; a hooded, goggled archer that can be seen in the video above. The controller itself features multiple layers of paint and laser etching, so not only does it look beat to hell but it'll feel that way too.As per usual with special edition Xbox 360 pads, it's also equipped with one of those nifty transforming D-pads, though whether the D-pad has been artificially aged like a too-expensive guitar replica is unknown.
HTC shows design work for Windows Phone 8X and 8S, strips them bare (video)
HTC and Microsoft have been cautious about what they'll let us see of the software on the Windows Phone 8X and its 8S counterpart. Apparently, they don't have any such compunctions about leaving the phones' naked components hanging in the breeze. Along with outlining the essentialist, Metro-inspired philosophy behind the Windows Phone 8 devices' design, HTC's new behind-the-scenes video (after the break) shows the internals without that extra-colorful shell getting in the way. The exposé is more about the sheer demand for customized hardware to match those distinctive enclosures than anything too scandalous -- that tapered shape requires some finessing on the inside, we're told. Whatever you think of HTC's guided tour, the company has at least learned its lesson and decided against including any unexpected prototypes this time around.
Diablo 3 Inferno Difficulty monster damage balance tweaked
Blizzard is making a few tweaks to Diablo 3's Inferno difficulty yet again. The developer added more high-level drops to the difficulty before, and this time it's effectively reducing the damage monsters will do in that mode. As Technical Game Designer Wyatt Cheng says, Blizzard is reducing the potency of player defense spells and reducing the monster damage, which means that monsters in Inferno won't hit as hard overall.Why? Some defensive skills, Cheng says, were made so effective that players consider them essential. Energy Armor, for example, is used by 83 percent of level 60 wizards, and War Cry's Impunity modifier is used by over 87 percent of barbarians. Nerfing the monster damage and the effectiveness of these spells is supposed to let players go to other options, rather than just walling up defense all of the time.Cheng says there are more changes coming: A new "monster power" option to up the difficulty for higher rewards; and a tweak to the monk's One With Everything skill. We'll stay tuned for those.
William Moggridge, portable computer and human interaction trailblazer, dies at 69
The next time you hinge open that notebook PC and smile at a feature that makes it easier to use, give a thought to Bill Moggridge, who passed away Saturday from cancer at the age of 69. The pioneering designer invented the modern clamshell design seen in all modern laptops, and is also viewed as the father of human interaction software design. The Compass Computer he designed for Grid Systems with the screen folded over the keyboard appeared in 1981, flew on the space shuttle, and inspired virtually every notebook design since. Perhaps more importantly, when he tried to use the machine himself, Moggridge was exasperated with the difficulty and decided to take the human factor into account for software design. To that end, he engaged experts from fields like graphics design and psychology, and tried to "build empathy for the consumer into the product," according to former partner, Professor David Kelly. The pair merged their design firms to form Ideo in 1991, and worked with clients like Apple, Microsoft and Procter & Gamble, designing products like the first Macintosh mouse and Palm V handheld along the way. In 2010, Moggridge became the director of the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York, and was a recipient of that institution's lifetime achievement award. He also won the Prince Philip Designer's Prize, the longest running award of its type in the UK, given for "a design career which has upheld the highest standards and broken new ground." See why that's true by going to Cooper-Hewitt's tribute video, right after break.
Steve Jobs and the "rubber band" patent
There's a lot of patent throwdowns going on in the tech industry lately, and it's very easy to see them as just a battle of titans, of huge corporations going up against each other for assets and portfolios of arbitrary "features." But here's a story that reminds you of the human side of all of this, and of what these patent battles are really supposed to be: Protection for those people who have the creativity and courage to put new ideas forward. One of the patents involved in the Apple/Samsung battle right now is the so-called "rubber-band" patent, according to Yoni Heisler at NetworkWorld it was one of Steve Jobs' favorite features. That's the scrolling effect that occurs when you reach the end of a webpage in Mobile Safari. It was later used for a "pull-to-refresh" effect that quite a few companies have copied since. The Next Web recounts that this patent was ascribed to a UI designer named Bas Ording, who Steve Jobs reportedly hired after meeting him in the lobby the afternoon after an unsuccessful job interview. Ording supposedly showed him a demo of a feature that would allow users to see more icons in their OS X Dock by pulling up a magnifying glass whenever they hovered over the icons already there. "I said, 'My God,' and hired him on the spot," says Jobs in Walter Isaacon's biography. Ording later came up with the scrolling feature and, according to testimony from Scott Forstall in the ongoing Samsung/Apple trial, the role it played in creating the iPhone interface made it one of Jobs' favorite patents. Forstall said that "rubber banding is one of the sort of key things for the fluidity of the iPhone and - and all of iOS, and so I know it was one of the ones that Steve really cared about." In initial talks with Samsung, that patent was one of the items that Jobs specifically laid claim to as Apple's. That's one of the main reasons that Apple and Samsung are fighting so vehemently over the patent portfolio. It's easy to see these as patent battles as two companies fighting over millions of dollars, but it's also important to remember that there are human achievements to recognize among these patents as well.
Former Apple UI designer joins Facebook to lead product design team
It remains to be seen exactly what he'll be involved with, but Facebook's new Product Design Manager brings quite a background with him to the job. Until just a few months ago, Chris Weeldreyer was a UI Design Manager at Apple (a role held for over eight years) where, as The Next Web reports, he was responsible for the company's iWeb and Numbers software, and has been named in a number of Apple's patent applications. Before that, he worked in both hardware and software product development, having held positions at Frog Design, Pentagram and Cooper. No word from either company on the move, but Weeldreyer himself made the move official on his LinkedIn page -- and, of course, his Facebook profile.
Jony Ive says Apple's current work is "most important"
Earlier today, Jonathan Ive was officially knighted at Buckingham Palace. To mark this occasion, Shane Richmond of The Telegraph published an excellent interview with the Apple design chief. In the long and personal conversation, Ive talks about his early design influences, which are decidedly British. He also talks extensively about his 20+ years at Apple, including a quick reference to his current work which he calls "the most important and the best work we've done." You can read more about Ive and his philosophy of design on The Telegraph's website.
Leica teases our wallets with $50,000 Edition Hermès M9-P, $1,000 scarf sold separately
If you've ever wondered if designer names alone can send a product's price tag through the roof, this should suffice as confirmation. Hermès, the Parisian fashion giant best known for its prohibitively expensive wearable accessories, has teamed up with Leica for some creative marketing. Two special M9-P editions will be available -- a total of 300 Edition Hermès digital rangefinders will ship beginning in June for $25,000, while 100 "very special" (even more exclusive) Edition Hermès - Série Limitée Jean-Louis Dumas models will be available in July for, ahem, $50,000 (that's fifty thousand, in case you assumed it was a typo). Likely realizing that it would be insanely absurd to unload the M9-P for either price without lenses included, Leica has opted to offer both as complete kits. The less expensive version uses some fancy calfskin leather with a silver chrome finish, and ships with a Leica Summilux-M 50 mm f/1.4 ASPH. optic. The "very special" version, on the other hand, includes a Leica Summicron-M 28 mm f/2 ASPH., a Leica Noctilux-M 50 mm f/0.95 ASPH. and a Leica APO-Summicron-M 90 mm f/2 ASPH -- all finished in anodized silver. It also comes with a bag and a book. Due to the incredibly limited production run, you'll probably want to pitch a tent (or have your assistant park their assistant's Maybach) outside the Washington DC Leica Store, beginning sometime later this month. Update: Need little more convincing about the craftsmanship? There are making-of and unboxing videos embedded after the break.
