What:    Greener Gadgets 2010
Where:   New York, NY
When:    February 25, 2010

Overview: You have to appreciate the honesty and good intentions of the consumer electronics industry, which decided to hold a conference specifically to address the environmental “elephant” under our industry rug. The oxymoron is right there in the title of the conference: Greener Gadgets.

Many consumer electronics products are small, but they have a big environmental impact.  Every part of the consumer electronics supply chain is ripe for evaluation and innovation: from material extraction and sourcing, to labor practices, to energy consumption and a sprawling waste stream created by fickle demand and the rapid pace of advancing technology. MOTO works with a variety of clients to help minimize the environmental footprint of their supply chains. We also encourage clients to make greener choices throughout the product development process. We attended Greener Gadgets to participate in the discourse, learn from our peers, meet with clients, and to get inspired. All those goals were met, I’m happy to report.

On the other hand, the crowd was lighter than anticipated — although I did see a lot of unclaimed badges at the registration desk. It could be that the insane blizzard that blanketed New York kept a lot of people away. I certainly hope the thin attendance did not reflect declining in interest in the topic on the part of the consumer electronics industry. Regardless, here are some highlights from the conference:

Best Presentation: Leo Bonnani of the MIT Media Lab showed off the lab’s SourceMap project, a Web 2.0 take on the data challenge of Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), using crowdsourcing and great user interface. (Wonder where the Vitamin B comes from in Kraft mac n’ cheese? Now you know.)

Best UnGadget: The winner of the Greener Gadgets annual design competition wasn’t a “thing” at all, but rather an application!  AUG (Augmented Living Goods) is a concept for a barcode-driven local food-finder smartphone app that sounds a lot like GoodGuide.

Most Thought-Provoking Idea: Yves Behar explained FuseProject’s business strategy that drives their greener ventures: “How do you change the business model of design?” he asked. “How do you create a legacy, rather than a short term engagement? We need a different reward system because [start-ups] can’t afford it. So we create partnerships.”  Anyone from Detroit interested in Yves’ hackable electric car concept?  (pic above via Inhabitat)

Most Deserving of More Focus: Jeff Omelchuck and EPEAT (Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool) has been working hard to move the EPEAT program toward a more consumer-facing model — a la Energy Star. Current standards exist for printers, imaging equipment, and televisions; standards for handheld consumer electronics such as phones and PDAs are still a few years away.

Big Companies In the Room: Conference attendees heard from or about LG, Panasonic, and Hewlett Packard. Where was everyone else? It sure would have been nice to feel some commitment in the room from more of the industry’s biggest players.

Worst Infomercial: The ANDREA air filter presentation would have been fine as part of a panel – but a whole 15 minutes just about the product itself? It was basically a sales pitch for a plant in a big plastic capsule. Unfortunately, I’m not in the market for an air filter.

Best Real Product Profiled: I liked EcoCradle’s 100% compostable and biodegradable packaging. It’s an alternative to Styrofoam made from seed husks and mushroom roots.

Old Friend I Was Happy to See Again: Chatted with MOTO’s partner in Life Cycle Analysis, Terry Swack from Sustainable Minds, and heard about the uptick in subscriptions from educational institutions.  A good sign – arming the up and coming generation with the right tool!

New Friend I Was Happy to See Again: It was great to see Stephan von Muehlen, Design Director of Energy Hub, a Brooklyn-based smart grid startup. Energy Hub is one of the few smart grid startups breaking real ground, currently in implementation stage of its pilot program partnership with Con Edison.

Best Presentation That Wasn’t: Steve Jobs released the Apple Supplier Responsibility Report. Once again, Apple is out front for auditing its suppliers on the basis of human rights and ecological standards. Even better, Apple published the results, even if they weren’t perfect. Would have been great content at GG10.

Best Side Benefits to Conference, Art Category: Thumbs up to Alex Hubbard’s car video + cinderblock screen, Whitney Biennial; and Tino Seghal’s situation at the Guggenheim.

Best Piece Conference Schwag: There was no schwag at Greener Gadgets… and thus nothing for me to dump in a landfill. *Whew!*

(top pic of Yves Behar via Inhabitat)

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.

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.

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.