iPhone ELITE Designer & Artist Exclusive Interview

iPhone ELITE Concept Artist & Designer Interview

by Yves Neidlinger on 24/11/08 at 6:11 pm

Yves Neidlinger is a technologist and marketing consultant. He is the National Channel Manager for Navara and the founder and Editor in Chief of iPhoneCTO.

Last week iPhoneCTO published a story about an iPhone concept designed by Mat Brady, a New Zealand artist. There was so much interest in his work that we interviewed him for his thoughts on iPhone, industrial design and if he ever heard back from Steve Jobs. Check back Friday for the second part in our exclusive interview.

1. Can you tell us about your background?

I’ve been primarily a concept artist for children’s television animation for most of my career with a rewarding few years as a concept artist in the games industry. The last 4 years, I’ve branched off into story boarding and now work as a 3D animator for Flux Animation in New Zealand. I design for fun since it’s a natural extension of my normal work and I particularly love designing UI.

2. Mat, what inspired you to create the mockup of an iPhone?

I wanted one, basically. Originally, I made the iPhone ELITE image to influence Apple’s industrial design team. I knew that if I sent my image to them directly they’d ignore it. I posted it on my blog in order to create a discussion and in so doing have a stronger influence on them that way, albeit indirectly.

3. What is the process for creating a conceptual design? What tools did you use? How long did it take?

I’ve found the bulk of any design process is to simply think it through first. This is most of the work, mixed with a healthy ability to be able to scrap whatever progress you’ve accomplished so far in favour of a new approach. (That’s actually difficult sometimes, but always highly rewarding). The iPhone ELITE image was done completely in Photoshop and took almost two days.

4. Steve Jobs is known to hate buttons (and fans for that matter). He had to be convinced to include the Home button that is on the iPhone now. What alternatives does this leave Apple to address their keyboard and camera issues?

This is a great question. To answer it I have to first outline the problem… The trouble with Apple is that they have managed to out-innovate themselves. They jumped too far forward and now, with respect to Blackberry users, the iPhone seems too different to adopt. They needed to ease people into change. If Apple had introduced two versions of the iPhone from the outset, one with a slide-out keyboard and one without, they would have captured the (physical keyboard-loving) business market by storm. It’s sadly ironic that if Apple had made an iPhone with a slide-out keyboard (which would still use touch-screen typing when the keyboard is hidden) they would have created more touch screen typing adopters. It would have allowed business users to get used to touch-screen typing and perhaps at some point, keyboards could be phased-out altogether. That can’t happen now because it’s either one or the other (touch screen or physical keyboard). Now, with Steve Jobs painting Apple into an “anti-button” corner, they will look foolish to release anything like the iPhone ELITE even if there has been an overwhelming positive response to the idea.

Apple will never release anything as old tech as a regular standard slide-out keyboard even though there’s actually nothing wrong with doing so. Instead, they will release an iPhone which has a physical keyboard, only it’s so much more than that! It’s unlike any keyboard you’ve seen before. Apple can grab the business market and still hold true to their forward thinking philosophy of innovation.

An idea I wanted to include in the iPhone ELITE, but didn’t, is a keyboard that doubles as a trackpad. It’s one surface with two functions. Drag your finger over the keys without pressing any keys down and it moves the cursor around with the same operation. Press a toggle key to use it as a normal physical keyboard again. I personally really like Jesus Diaz’s idea of incorporating gaming buttons like that on a Nintendo DS. That would be terrific, but again, whatever Apple comes up with will be what you want (a physical keyboard) and what they want (something different and innovative). I personally think Steve Job’s anti-button stance is too hard-lined, and he needs to bend a little. He might be better off thinking in terms of: “Sure, I may hate buttons, but ‘our’ buttons are cool”. Can you imagine Barack Obama ditching his stealth Blackberry for the next model iPhone because it now comes with a keyboard?