REDMOND, Wash. — April 12, 2010 — For Pioneer Studios creative director Jon Friedman, it’s not symphonies or sunsets that inspire great design. It’s the little things we work with every day.
“It’s the way we use garbage cans or soap dispensers,” says Friedman, who works in the Microsoft group named for Seattle’s Pioneer Square. “In every little problem there’s an opportunity for a better design, and a better experience.”
KIN TWO, left, features a high-resolution camera and enables users to shoot HD video; the compact KIN ONE, right, is small enough to easily fit into a pocket.
Friedman says that approach played a big role in Microsoft’s next generation of social phones, called KIN, which the company launched today. The new touch-screen phones combine a sleek, compact form factor with software that helps users discover, share and interact with friends and family online. The phones, available this spring through Verizon Wireless in the U.S. and later this year through Vodafone in Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.K., let users organize and experience their social media feeds, video, messages and more, and share them with others as they choose.
KIN began, he says, with a lot of research to help understand today’s younger generation, which has grown up with social media embedded into the fabric of their lives. The research involved everything from usage statistics, to target-customer profiles, to a Web-based “consumer collaboration” group called project muse that involved some 2,000 volunteers
More :
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2010/apr10/04-12windowsphonelaunch.mspx
