2/19/03The Sony corporation, doubtlessly one of the world's most prominent and diverse electronics manufacturers, as a broad market and has long been active in the search for devices of increasing use, appeal and ergonomic soundness. With a massively successful track record (the company's list of successes reads like a roll call of significant advancements in the field of portable electronics), Sony has recently been responsible for the manufacture of their line of PDA: The Sony Clie Sony's current effort with the Clie represents a concerted effort to integrate the diverse features offered by many separate utilities in a single, convenient, and eminently portable device. I believe that the Clie, with its distinctive and appealing design, has great potential to become a major player among other handheld computing devices. Based on my confidence in the product, I have chosen the Clie as a device on which to test possible structure-based improvements. Specifically, what I propose is a further decrease in the size of the device and a resulting increase in portability (with further potential increases in durability and functionality). Based on the folding and expanding structure of an insect's wingspan (in this case a Beetle), I have incorporated a protective shell with the current form, which, when opened down the center, will extend the device by revealing and elongating a second plane (which can potentially be assigned as a keyboard or stylus surface). When folded, the PDA will be quite small, and geometrically square, with the protective case covering it and only a headphone jack, volume control, I/O ports, and negligible controls accessible. The goal of the redesign is to encourage greater and more free day-to-day use. The added durability of the casing is especially important, since it will likely have much bearing on the manner in which the user treats the device (interaction should hopefully be extremely casual). Ideally the resulting product would be one which is entirely non-intimidating and extremely convenient, perhaps serving as an all-in-one address book, limited web-browser, message receiver/sender, and audio player. |