Interview with Jim Wicks, Design Chief at Motorola Mobility

[David Lundblad]

So, Motorola...

From a design perspective this company have always been on my radar. A few years ago I spoke at length with their innovation team and they were hardcore smart. It's just...they've never really shipped a product that blew my mind or even raised the hairs on my back - and it was unclear why.

In this recent interview with the Design Chief at Motorola Mobility some light is shed on their old process and perhaps also, why their products fell short in the past.

One on One: Jim Wicks, Design Chief at Motorola Mobility - NYTimes.com

"Not many years ago we were actually producing 40 to 50 products a year. When you do that you build a design organization that is very ?matrixed.? The challenge there is that any one product that you do in that scenario has to be able to match up against any other company?s one product in a retail setting."
I know this scenario well. We fall victims to it within Mobile Nations too sometimes. Stretched too thinly you're in no position to be innovative.

"The other dimension is power. We absolutely will never sacrifice battery power. Our two areas we want to satisfy are biggest screen/smallest device and enough battery to get them through the day so they don?t have to worry."
Solid arguments but nothing groundbreaking. What's your thoughts? Where does Motorola fit into the competition in terms of design?

 

[CrackBerry Kevin]

I really appreciate that Motorola has the guts to say we don't want to sacrifice battery life.

Smartphones are still phones. They're utility based. Yes, you can make them cool looking and give the OS a beautiful look and make it fun to use and make it sleek and whatever, but end of the day a phone is a tool that allows you to do stuff. A phone with a dead battery isn't a phone. It's a paperweight.

All other things being equal, I'd take take a thicker/uglier phone with better battery life over one that is dead halfway through the day.

 

[Ry]

Too many products.