Fashion in electronics -- electronics in fashion at ELKOM

OK, I just remembered to take my notes from my laptop from the session we participated. Here's some text that was worth writing down, understandable and somehow connected to our course.

SUUNTO

Fashion in sports: functionality with design

Relevant functionality and design

"To stand out but no too much", important especially women with fashionable products

Professional gear/tools matter, passion -> design and materials are important

Three important factors were presented for product developement:

- Design thinking: courage for disruptive innovation, bravery

- Emotion: people's needs and desires, build character into products

- Interpreter: From invention to innovation

At least the first bullet rings (disrupive innovation) a bell. The second is about the social side of the innovation (Jacobs 2007). Well, the third bullet is about the well-known path onwards from invention.

The there was some case examples:

Kill your own product icon (diving: Stinger)

Outdoor instrument (Vector)

Core (Vector product family), stronger style, succesful

Keys for success:

- User insight collection (multi-disciplinary teams!)

- Close interaction with marketing, product management, R&D teams and manufacturing

- Iterative working methods

And then some:

Lifetime vs. fashionability

Annual cycles with 'women's products'

Distributed products

Web based solution, sharing coming

VERTU

How to create a new category?

Then something about the current economical state of the world:

Growth of discount and value segement, AND growth of premium and luxury markets

Long-term prospects for the luxury markets remain strong

Then back to the beginning:

Vision to create a (product) category: brings other players as well

Key success factors: brand positioning, etc.

hand made, materials

products that are loved may have a long lifetime

design is critical

Sell in luxury street (?) so that customers understand the value

GENELEC

Role of design in the corporate image strong

But however, the firm is strong in professional audio scene

Technological requirement is a must

Shape of the boxes came from physics along the years (not from industrial design originally!)

Then, the developement of the current product line:

In 1987: good performance, but different shapes, not congruent resemblance

Bring in people from outside:

Harri Koskinen (HK, a Finnish designer) remembered the 80's shapes of the speakers

New models starting 2000, by HK

"Why did you stop the previous models", from the field...

Obviously:

Design and marketing

Advertisement campaign, visual messages strong