Over at CNET, MOTO Development Group president Gregor Berkowitz has a new column that looks under the hood of Motorola’s Droid smartphone to evaluate what made the product successful — and how it could be improved.

This much is clear: Motorola positioned the Droid to be the anti-iPhone. While the iPhone is sleek and rounded, the Droid is square and angular. Where the iPhone seems lightweight and delicate, the Droid feels heavy and rugged… so much so that Gregor calls it the “Hummer of smartphones.”

The obstacles Motorola faced in bringing the Droid to market and re-establishing its own relevance as a maker of cutting-edge handsets are more than skin deep. To get a running start in the fast-changing smartphone business, Motorola embraced Google’s Android operating system instead of building one of its own. Yet that move created challenges of its own, as Motorola was then forced to adapt its handset hardware to the idiosyncracies of a third-party OS.

Tuning a piece of hardware to a piece of software is a laborious and time-consuming task, and upon close inspection, the Droid still bears some scars from the process — most likely because Motorola was in a hurry to rush the product to market. To learn about some of the ways in which this becomes most apparent, read Gregor’s column.

The show floor at the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is like a tropical rainforest:  it’s a vast ecosystem that demonstrates just how many different things can be built from the same basic set of parts. The more you look at consumer electronic products from the standpoint of functional parts and components — as we often do here at MOTO –  the more you realize that the  “guts” of most gadgets are more or less similar.

So how do manufacturers differentiate their products? There are two main techniques: The first is through user interface design and software, and the second is via the materials that give each device its exterior shape, color, and texture.

In today’s crowded marketplace, device-makers should realize that using standard materials in standard ways won’t help them stand out.  It takes extra investment in supply chain logistics, tooling, and unusual manufacturing processes to create products that seem truly unique. Yet when done right, the extra money spent on materials can become the key differentiator that makes a product successful.

With that in mind, Chris Porter, MOTO’s Director of Supply Chain, explored the floor at CES 2010 to pick out a few products and trends that reflect how manufacturers are using materials to deliver strategic differentiation. Here’s what he noticed:

Utilitarian, Sporty Finishes:  Dell Latitude 2100 NB Netbook

This new netbook aimed for the education market features what Dell is terming a “rubberized” texture. The advantage of texture is that it hides imperfections well, and in this case enables “efficient grasp” of the product.  This is a refreshing change from the typical glossy or textured hard plastic finish we are used to in the netbook category — a clear differentiator.

Dell’s “rubber” is actually an application of what the industry calls “overmolding” where an elastomer is molded over an inner plastic part. This is not a new idea but provides a ’softer’ feel that consumers continue to like. It will be interesting to see how these materials perform over time in terms of durability, as elastomers have a tendency to wear quickly and suffer from UV color changes.

Printing for the People:  Dell Inspiron Zino HD Desktop PC

In-Mold Decoration (IMD) is a process used to apply ink to plastic during molding, to create colorful graphics that almost look painted on. IMD has been around for some time, and the basic technology involves transferring ink from a printed foil onto a plastic surface during the injection-molding process.

Dell has significant experience with the IMD process, a technology which has been around for some time, but it continues to be used more and more as OEMs want to offer as much customization or individualization to consumers as possible.

IMD is a popular technology but there’s a lot of focus now on newer printing technologies that allow customization after the molding process, particularly on 3D surfaces (e.g. The Flip).

Sexier Metal and Glass:  Dell Adamo Laptop

Two areas of interest here:

1)  Main casing is machined from solid aluminum (same process Apple uses on Macbook Pro models). This creates a very stiff housing allowing less material to be used.

This solid body aluminum is a very energy-intensive process, both from the original material processing and then the recycling of excess metal ‘chips’. Machining the main housing from solid aluminum allows you to eliminate the need for a separate internal frame component (typically die cast) . Also, makes it much faster and easier for mechanical engineers to change the design without requiring modifications to tooling and the associated leadtimes — all you do is change the CNC machining path.

2) The 13.4″ HD display with edge-to-edge glass: that’s Gorilla Glass, a glass product Corning developed using a fusion process where they temper the glass to a greater depth to improve impact resistance.

Glass is sexy, people want glass, but they also want it curved — and that’s one of the big areas of interest in the materials world that wasn’t yet in evidence at CES 2010. CE product developers are waiting for curved surfaces with the properties of Gorilla Glass for scratch and impact resistance.  We forsee molded glass for touchscreens, phone displays and laptops as one of the next big materials trends, maybe even at CES 2011 but certainly CES 2012.

Bio-Plastics Getting Real:  Samsung Reclaim Phone

Samsung is claiming that 40% of this enclosure is made from bio-plastic (plastic based on corn oil vs that derived from petroleum).

Some of the traditional limitations of organic plastics compared to engineering thermoplastics like polycarbonate are that they have low heat resistance and poor mechanical properties (strength, stiffness). From a manufacturing point of view, it’s very unclear right now if and how we can entirely replace traditional plastics with ‘bio-plastics’. This is what a lot of people want, so we suspect that in the case of a product like this, the use of bio-plastic is more a marketing tool, rather than a real functional element of the product.

Still, if this is 40% of enclosure by weight, that’s impressive for a product that requires a lot of impact strength. (MOTO is curious what materials they used and how they pass mechanical/thermal test requirements - please comment if you know more of the story!)

This also points to an underlying issue in the product development world:  there is a wide range of marketing information about recycled materials and bio-plastics (some of which are made from vegetable oil), yet limited available material data for the mechanical engineer who wants to compare material properties to ’standard’ engineering plastics and specify these new ‘eco-materials’ in consumer electronics products. Why has this information not been summarized?

Replaying the Plastic:  Sony Vaio W Eco Netbook

Sony’s product is reducing use of virgin petroleum-based plastic, though this time the claim is an impressive “20% of the PC/ABS resin used in the cover, palm rest and incidental parts is comprised of reprocessed plastic from DVD and CD waste.”

CDs are molded from optically clear high quality polycarbonate (PC). This recycled PC is added to a PC/ABS plastic. Given that one of the primary challenges in the recycled materials industry is to develop a reliable feedstock of materials (CDs, water bottles etc) to ensure that production can be continuous, we are interested to know whether Sony has developed an agreement with a raw material plastic supplier just for this application or whether this ‘recycled CD resin’ is freely available.

Brown Feels Green:
Impecca Bamboo Mouse, Keyboard, and Headphones; Asus Bamboo Netbooks

The Impecca mouse, keyboard and headphones appear to be formed to shape with heat/steam and then machined. The newest in the line of Asus Bamboo series (the U83Jc, U53Jc, and U33Jc)  glues laminate bamboo sheets onto plastic enclosures, covering not only the chassis but the wristrests and even touch pads. Reading the mostly positive blog reviews of these bamboo-skinned CE products, it’s clear people really love the idea of a wood warming up their day-to-day computing experience.

Bamboo is a fast growing plant and the material on its own can be regarded as sustainable.  However the whole life cycle impact of the product design needs to be assessed to determine whether the product can be considered truly ’sustainable’.  For any material one has to ask:  what are the costs of obtaining the material, the supply chain, integrating it into the product, recovering it after the product is obsolete, etc.

Bamboo is a really great material — grows easily, light, strong — but how green that makes the product depends on how the material is used and integrated. In either case pictured here (forming or lamination), the glues and energy expenditure in manufacture may likely offset any gains made in the replacement of plastic with bamboo.

At MOTO, we use life cycle analysis software as a tool to help determine the impact of various factors on the environment. Raw material, processing technology, supply chain, shipping, product usage and end of life disposal are some of the factors under consideration.  Making a valid claim on sustainability is more than a skin-deep endeavor.  Differentiation, however, is a less complex undertaking — and wood here does the trick.

Scratching the Surface

Of course, this is just a skimming of the surface of materials “stand-outs” at CES 2010.  What held your attention at CES, and how did novel or re-positioned materials play in its appeal?

Links

Gadi Amit, President of New Deal Design, also on differentiation in his recent post “How Smallness is Changing Hardware” on GigaOm.

The success of the iPhone has triggered the adoption of touchscreen systems in a wide range of mobile devices, and a bevy of new gadgets equipped with capacitive sensing technology have now hit the market.  MOTO has years of experience developing products that use capacitive touch, and we’ve had the opportunity to test many of the latest devices. Our conclusion: All touchscreens are not created equal.

It takes finesse to create a touchscreen system that’s pleasant to use, because touchscreens require seamless integration between hardware components, software algorithms, and user-interface design. If a manufacturer cuts corners or flubs any of the critical elements, the user’s experience with a touchscreen product is likely to suffer.

Simple and True

Although we usually use sophisticated tools to test touch screen accuracy, MOTO has also developed a simple technique anyone can use to evaluate the resolution and accuracy of a touchscreen device. All you need is a basic drawing program (download one if necessary), a steady hand, and a few straight lines drawn very slowly on the screen.

This video shows what happened when we recently took several touchscreen systems out for a test drive:

The Virtue of Slow

Why do you need to draw slowly?  On a good touchscreen, users can draw clean straight lines, even while going very slowly, so the graphics that appear on screen accurately represent what was physically drawn.

On inferior touchscreens, it’s basically impossible to draw straight lines. Instead, the lines look jagged or zig-zag, no matter how slowly you go, because the sensor size is too big, the touch-sampling rate is too low, and/or the algorithms that convert gestures into images are too non-linear to faithfully represent user inputs.

Pressure Matters

Also, even on a single device, the amount of pressure and the part of the finger you use on the screen has an impact on how well it senses. A good touchscreen device will produce linear output regardless of whether you’re using the full pad of your finger, or just the dry corner of your cuticle.  When comparing devices, make sure to use even pressure across all of them.

If you want to show the most extreme case, draw very lightly with the corner of your finger. The artifacts will increase significantly, showing which device is really the best with a weak signal. This is important because quick keyboard use and light flicks on the screen really push the limits of the touch panel’s ability to sense.

Here you can see the results of our test:

Edge Performance

Take careful note of the performance at the edges of the screen. The performance at the edge is challenging to tune, and separate from the basic “waviness” test. The iPhone tracks all curve very strongly as you approach the edge of the screen, despite a straight finger trajectory. This is especially obvious at the bottom, where the iPhone has a sensitivity problem.

The Droid Eris [Nexus One] is actually the clear winner for edge performance — the signal tracks right off the edge of the screen very consistently.

[edit] As of time of first writing, we hadn’t tested the Nexus One.  It does slightly better than the Eris.  In fact, they both use the same touch controller IC.

A Quest for High Signal-to-Noise Ratio

To create a superior touchscreen experience, it’s essential to develop a touchscreen sensor that has the highest possible signal-to-noise ratio, or SNR. When a manufacturer gets it right, the device tracks touch inputs almost as if they were connected to physical objects in the real world. Get it wrong and consumers end up with inferior touchscreen systems that are inaccurate, insensitive, and absolutely infuriating to use for typing.

Key drivers of SNR include:

• Conductive sensor material
• Substrate material
• Substrate thickness
• Distance from display (the biggest noise source)
• Sensing waveform
• Sensor pattern
• Sensor pitch
• Analog sensing circuitry
• Sample rate

Touchscreens are a catalyst for innovation and a powerful way for device manufacturers to differentiate their products in an intensely competitive marketplace. But as our demonstration shows, there’s a right way and a wrong way to deploy the technology. MOTO has worked with capacitive touch interfaces for more than 15 years, and here are some essential dos and don’ts for anyone entering the field:

• Don’t skimp on materials. With touchscreen hardware, manufacturers get what they pay for — and consumers will notice the difference.
• Allow ample time to develop your algorithms. Don’t treat touchscreen algorithms as an element of component sourcing; for best results, create a distinct touch development track under your own roof to make sure your products are both responsive and accurate.
• Closely integrate touchscreen hardware, software, and user interaction development, and do so as early as possible in the product development process. Never treat them as separate tasks.

In the next installment of his column for CNET, MOTO Development Group president Gregor Berkowitz examines the Olympus EP-1, an all-new digital camera designed to look like a classic SLR from the 1960s.

Why did Olympus give a digital camera the New Beetle treatment?

It’s simple: Point-and-shoot digital cameras are threatened by a new generation of camera-equipped mobile phones that actually take pretty good pictures. To fend off extinction, camera manufacturers are scrambling to create products that offer functionality no mobile phone could ever hope to match.

In the case of the EP-1, those highlights include Mad Men-era styling, removable lenses, and a fast (1/4000), mechanical shutter that makes a satisfying *click* when you take a picture. The iPhone will never offer any of those features, of course, which suggests that the EP-1 wants to be something more than just a high-quality camera. It also aspires to be a lifestyle accessory for people who want to show the world that they are serious photography enthusiasts.

To learn more about all the ways in which that ideal was incorporated into the design of the EP-1, read the full CNET column.

It’s no secret that Apps are having a profound impact on consumer electronics devices. Thanks to popular new products like Apple’s iPhone and the Google-powered G1 phone, Apps — those relatively lightweight, Internet-enabled software programs optimized to perform a specific task — have revolutionized the way we think about mobile devices by transforming them into network-enabled computing platforms that are easily customizable and almost infinitely versatile.

But what about other kinds of gadgets? How can electronic products that aren’t used as mobile communications tools take advantage of the opportunities afforded by the proliferation of Apps?

Google’s Android operating system may be part of the answer. Although originally created for use on mobile phones, Android can be adapted to bring App functionality to a wide range of devices — from portable multimedia players, to home appliances, to telecom gear. It also has many advantages: it’s open-source, powerful, supported by a robust development community, and free of charge to use. For hardware manufacturers, then, the challenge comes in figuring out how to adapt Android quickly, reliably, and affordably for use beyond the cellphone.

MOTO’s Android Media Platform (AMP) makes that possible. Created by a team of MOTO engineers, AMP is a full-featured Android reference platform that makes it faster and easier for customers to bring app- enabled products to market. Put simply, AMP is a multimedia development environment for creating Android-enabled products that enjoy full interoperability with the complete library of Android apps.

For example, with AMP, a bedside clock radio could do double-duty as a network-enabled glucose monitor for diabetics. Or a simple dashboard accessory could provide detailed information about your car’s fuel consumption and operating history.

For device manufacturers, AMP provides a powerful set of tools to compress the product design and development process and focus on creating sophisticated technical architectures and user experiences.

For MOTO, AMP is an exciting way to enable innovation by making it easier to embed new capabilities in almost any consumer electronics item. AMP is designed to accelerate the shift from a stand-alone world of “dumb” products to a new, connected universe of “smart” devices.

What other kinds of things could AMP do?  If you have ideas, we’d love to hear about them.

A few months back, the folks at CNET invited us to write a column about the latest consumer electronics gadgets to provide insights into the design and and manufacturing decisions that go into making them. Now, at long last, the first of these columns has gone live, and we really like the way it turned out.

In our first Design Review, MOTO Development Group president Gregor Berkowitz takes a look at the Sony X Series Walkman NWZ-X1051, a touch-screen music player with 16GB of storage, built-in Wi-Fi capability, and big ambitions to take on Apple’s wildly successful line of iPod music players. The NWZ-X1051 definitely reflects Sony’s decades of experience building Walkman audio players, but there are also aspects of this device that take the brand in an entirely new direction. Will that combination be enough to put Sony back on the map? Read the column to find out.

In 2007, MOTO developed a prototype of a Multi-Touch Table– a large-scale, resisitive-touch system that enables multiple users to  conduct simultaneous touch-based interactions in a unified content environment. Since then, we’ve been eager to develop applications that exploit the unique capabilities of the Multi-Touch Table, and recently created a new one: casino-style Blackjack.

Gaming is an ideal application for multi-touch screen technology. Replacing physical tokens, chips, cards, or game pieces with virtual items eliminates tedious setup, distribution, and cleanup tasks while increasing the efficiency and accuracy of gameplay.

And unlike many other real-world computing tasks, games have well-established norms and behaviors that are straightforward to translate into multi-touch gestures and interactions; players still feel that they “own” their cards, pieces, or money. Meanwhile, team-oriented play is actually easier in a virtual gamespace, because players can collaborate and share cards without having to physically pass them back-and-forth.

Showing Our Hand

With all that in mind, MOTO developed a full-scale version of Blackjack for this multi-touch screen. Written in Java, using an open source graphics library called Processing (for images of playing cards, chips, card rotations, and animation), Multi-Touch Blackjack recreates a casino-style game experience on a touch-screen tabletop, giving a familiar game new verve. Watch our video to see what we mean:

Multi-Touch Blackjack from MOTO Development Group.

From a design perspective, the key challenge was to develop gestures that feel natural and intuitive. Fortunately, Multi-Touch Blackjack also knows what players may want to do based on where they are in the action, so it automates some aspects of the game that might otherwise require non-intuitive actions.

When you have a hand of cards, for example, it assumes you probably want to hide them.

In the multi-touch environment, the basic elements of blackjack gameplay are re-created using familiar gestures and interactions:

Dealing: The dealer simply slides virtual cards across the table (or the task can be automated).

Private viewing: Players can shield their cards from other players by creating a cupped barrier with one hand. This gesture hides the face of the cards behind an opaque “curtain.” To view cards privately, the player slides their cupped hand slowly down the virtual cards. As the hand moves, the opaque curtain rises to reveal a small portion of the cards.

Betting: Bets are placed by dragging virtual chips into the center of the table.

Showing: Players reveal their cards by raising the cupped hand that shields them. (This behavior can be restricted so users cannot show their cards accidentally.)

Next Stop, Vegas

Transforming slot machines into social tables that can transition from individual games to social interactions and back to group games likely holds too much promise for Vegas not to innovate in this direction.  How could Vegas resist the potential for more decorative and flexible gaming surfaces?

It’s easy to go one simple step further and envision casinos adding RFID readers to these tables, enabling loyalty card usage and a bevy of targeted marketing opportunities.  Users could place drink orders, pay for food, buy tickets to the show their neighbor just talked up.

There may be human learning curves and security concerns to wrestle, but our experience with forthcoming larger-scale, high quality touch sensing technologies suggests that fun, social, multi-touch casino gaming is around the bend.

Links

A New York Times article summarizes the state of multi- touch.

MOTO Labs’  J. Daniell Hebert gave a talk on “Android Beyond the Phone” at the 2009 Maker Faire.

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Lately we’ve been tinkering with deploying Android beyond the phone (using Google’s open-source Android to connect devices to each other and the web), so we thought we’d see if we could leverage the efficiency of Android on a BeagleBoard, the accessibility of wireless webcams, and the ease of a Flickr feed to a custom Google Gadget to track the ups and downs of our metered utilities.

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Devices such as the iPhone have begun to scratch the surface of gesture-based software interfaces, yet large, true multi-touch interfaces are still rare, bulky, and expensive.

This recent prototype - a next iteration of labs’ Sensing Screen - promises effortless touch interaction, full multi-touch, a robust glass work surface, low stack height, with comparatively moderate cost.  It does not utilize cameras or projection technology.   This means that in production, this scalable technology could be very thin and very big.  It could sit on legs like any table, or lay on a wall surface like any LCD panel.

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