moses choi

How important is good design to you? If I could live a 2nd life or if I could do things again, I think I would have considered going into design as a career. Specifically, the type of design I’m referring to is industrial design, human-centric design or product design for the purposes of solving problems, closing the gap in a poor product offering or simply producing something of value for its own sake.

I’m not the most artistic person out there, in fact, I am not artistic at all. But the world of design is very attractive to me. If there was a way that I could fuse design with business/making money while providing solutions to the masses, I would be very satisfied.

One of the top companies in the world in this field is IDEO. It has consistently been ranked as one of the most innovative firms in the world by Business Week magazine. They are experts in both design and business and have worked on some really interested projects over the years, bringing to market some of the most compelling solutions to problems sometimes we never realized we had.

Good design, good user experience and aesthetic appeal makes good business sense especially in the fickle consumer marketplace. In many ways, it helps define the brand. Over the years, unbeknownst to me, design has become very important, but not in isolation. Form and function has to of equal salience. I admire companies like Samsung, Apple, and Porsche for their commitment to both form and function. Contrast these firms with lets say, Bang & Olufsen. It seems to me that they are more about form over function for the purposes of serving a small segment of the market with a large amount of disposable income.

To answer my own question, design is very important and the companies that are able to bring both design and utility in a singular package will end up winning the very limited funds in my wallet.

I was able to get a pretty good deal on a pair of the acclaimed Shure E4C IEMs. I’m looking forward to them and will be posting my thoughts on them when I do get them sometime this week. I’ve always been a fan of inner ear monitors (IEM) as they provide the isolation I want and usually good bass. Back in 2000, I got my first pair from Pacific Mall in Toronto from an importer of audio goodies from Asia; they were the Sony EX71s. I loved them while I had them and used them with my MD players and later with my 3rd gen. ipod. However, my tastes evolved and over the last year and a half, I was able to experiment with some other IEMs and headphones such as the Grado SR80s, Koss KSC 75s, Senn CX300s, JBL 220s and briefly the Shure E2Cs. The E2Cs blew me away and was what convinced me to put down the big bucks for the E4Cs.

I’ll be selling my Senn CX300 and JBL 220s, so if you’re interested in them, let me know!

On to the ipod. We all know what the iPhone will look like and by the time it comes out, we’ll have seen the LG Prada phone and the Samsung touchscreen either online or in stores, depending on what country you live in and how passionate you are about cellular devices. I think the new ipod should keep the iPhone form-factor and take out the cellphone functionality, keep the wifi, and – this is what I think could be killer – make sure that there’s VOIP functionalities on the phone. So, basically, wherever there is an internet connection via wifi, the user can use the phone interface on the ipod to make/receive calls! Now whether that is through some sort of iChat solution, or an independent VOIP solution, or a product from Cisco would be up to the brilliant guys in Apple product development to decide. However, the Cisco solution is interesting because it can actually happen because of the deal between Cisco and Apple which put to rest their patent lawsuit.

I really hope the new ipod can also have fantastic battery life too….One can dream right?

Maybe by the end of the year, I can be using my E4C with a brand new ipod!