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Tales of Gadget Design: the FlowerPot Gizmo!

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I’ve been asked to write more frequently about building gadgets, so I’ll be putting together posts that reflect the variety of experiences and advice I’ve gleaned over the years. To get this party started (yo), I thought I’d share what I consider to be a fairly amusing, yet quite real, topic: the FlowerPot Gadget Design. The story goes something like this…

You’ve conceptualized some new gadget. It’s going to revolutionize the long-sought-after convergence between microwaves, WiFi routers, and doorbells. The technology is mostly figured out, the first rev of the board design is mostly working, it’s time to start thinking about the actual product now. You hire a top-notch industrial design firm (probably the one who used the coolest method of binding their sketches and/or presentation), share your vision, and await your first concepts.

A few days go by, and their team shows up with a cleverly bound sketchbook, all parties very excited about the upcoming ‘reveal’. Anywhere from 6-12 concepts are shown, some very simple ‘boxes with a mild twist’, some ubercool concepts that are obviously impossible to actually manufacture, and then, there on one of the pages, it is. The flowerpot. You look at it a couple of times to make sure the synapses are firing properly and that you are in fact seeing a flowerpot. And it’s true, you are.

Now I don’t know if the flowerpot originates in design school, or if some legendary designer once waxed poetic on the flowerpot as ultimate incarnation of designing gadgets. I can say I’ve seen the concept presented many times in my career, a surprising amount i’d say. Even last week when meeting a new (and very cool) gadget company when discussing their product strategy I explicitly asked the question if their ID firm mocked up a flowerpot. They showed me the molded sample.

I’m not a designer, but I believe I have a good eye for products combined with a healthy respect for the design process. I know there is often a healthy ‘battle’ between design concept and real world implementation. But I am pretty sure we aren’t going to see very many flowerpot gadgets actually come to market anytime soon, well maybe with an exception here and there.

And then again, maybe the FlowerPot Gadget *is* the future….

The TwitterPeek is Real? Cmon! No, seriously?

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As a “connected gadget guy” I had heard a few rumors that Peek (the company blissfully unaware that people generally do like BlackBerries, and I don’t much care that it’s on Oprah’s list – the future is smartphones and it isn’t slowing down anytime soon) was coming out with a Twitter-only device. I scoffed at most of these comments, as it sounded so… odd. As I stated about the WikiReader last week, in the mobile space converged devices are hands-down beating out single purpose devices.

But I saw a tweet today claiming it’s real, and I did a quick Amazon search, and lo-and-behold – it’s real! But to think that there’s a market out there for a Twitter-only device is just plain puzzling.

Let me break it down a bit:

  1. Twitter use is, for the most part, technologists and some celebrities.  Both groups have smartphones, primarily iPhones and BlackBerries, which have fairly rich Twitter integration.  Neither will purchase a new device that does Twitter only.
  2. New-to-Twitter people are still getting warm on the concept (well actually mostly they are just dropping the service), and wouldn’t buy a new gadget.
  3. This leaves us to the “if and when Twitter gains mass acceptance” market.  Let’s discuss some more…

I’m still far from sold that Twitter hits mainstream adoption. Granted it’s being splattered across virtually every media one comes across, it’s still lacking in its ability to get widespread use by widespread users.  This is very different from “people know about this Twitter thing because of Oprah”.  Right now, most people who encounter the service do not become regular users.  It’s still quite a few steps away from the masses actually using it.

Which makes it even more steps away from the masses buying a device that does nothing but Tweet.  Sorry to poo-poo on a new gadget (again), but I can’t help but feel that this is yet another case of a lack of market definition prior to building something (costly).

By the way, on the chance/assumption that this is exactly the same Peek as before, only more Twitterized, then at least I feel a little bit better that there wasn’t a crazy amount of time investment to build this thing.  But if that’s the case I can’t understand why they’d turn off the email service?  Too much crazy going on for me here to comprehend.

As a last p.s. – whomever was supposed to launch this thing shouldn’t have let Amazon list it early… Kinda spoils the surprise.

WikiReader sounds great. If only…

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If you didn’t hear about it, a device launched this week called the WikiReader. Appropriately named, it’s a small gadget that gives you access to Wikipedia.  It’s $99, has no WiFi (the entire Wikipedia site is effectively downloaded via SD cards), and does nothing but Wiki. Which, as I started to say, sounds great, if only…

There weren’t way too many other ways to do exactly this AND it weren’t another single purpose device! This thing seems like it was dreamed up in a lab by someone back in 2004 and brought to market 5 years later. What’s next, CitySearchEr and PocketEvite? There’s such a radical amount of momentum in favor of multi-purpose devices that I am stunned this got to market. Here’s a list of all the other devices that already do the exact same thing, and more:

  • ANY smartphone. Not just the 40 million iPod touch/iPhones, but all the BlackBerries, Windows Mobile devices, and oodles of Symbian, Android, and other phones.
  • Many dumbphones. It may be a terrible experience, but even my little Samsung Alias has a Web browser and EVDO connectivity.
  • The Kindle.
  • The Sony PSP and Nintendo DS.
  • All netbooks and laptops.

In fact, the only two categories of devices I can even think of that do NOT have Wikipedia access (the real kind, through the Internet) are most GPS units and the misbegotten Peek. Neither of which are exactly the industries I’d be betting on either.

So how about analysis from another perspective – potential market. By the way, since I managed to anger the entire tablet community with a recent post (all dozen of you! hah, i kid, i kid!!), please note that when I say “no market potential” what I *actually* mean is “extremely slim” but that just sounds silly if you repeat it often enough..

  • College Students – nope. They all have or want iPhones and/or laptops. At any time when they’d need such a device, they have another device that will do the same thing. And it’s just not sexy enough to win for materialistic/emotional appeal.
  • High school students – nope, see above.
  • Travelers – nope. They rent GPS devices and have phones.
  • Businessmen – what? come on.
  • Mommies – per the wife: “and why do i need that??”
  • Reality show contestants, zookeepers, and carnies – hmmm

For my final point on this topic, if i consider the $99 for a WikiReader vs $199 for the “small” iPod Touch, it’s basically a no-brainer.  While one could argue the Touch is 2x the price, the reality is those who are dealing with the discretionary income to buy an portable Wikipedia device are barely, if at all, impacted by its price point.

I’m sorry to be such “a hater” on the product, and recognize that there are a bunch of people out there who put a crazy amount of effort in making this happen. I just wish organizations like yours would seek external product marketing counsel before bringing something like this to the market.  Someone, somewhere should have been making a go-nogo decision once you had the concept figured out, but before investing the actual energy in finalizing things.