We had the distinct pleasure to interview award winning designer DNgroup Design Team about their original and creative Active loudspeaker design work. DNgroup Design Team is an award-winning industrial designer, that makes our world a better place with their original active loudspeaker works.
DNgroup Design Team ("DDT") answered Design Interview ("DI") questions about their award-winning work db60 Active loudspeaker. Interview questions prepared by Frank Scott.
DDT : Part of the inspiration came from the MUJI wall mounted CD player - One of the designers at our design office has one of those at home. It's a design we all love for its simplicity and iconic expression. The inspiration led us into a design process, wanting to develop and design an easy-to-use wall mounted speaker that will play music from the devices many of us own - smart phones, tablets and digital music players. Humour is important for us in our daily lives and we wanted to include that in the design as well. Many of the loudspeaker products for mobile devices on the market today falls into two categories (as we see it). 1. Very sporty/rugged (focusing on young people on the move) and battery driven. 2. iPhone altars - speakers in various shapes, all with the iPhone as the all-important focus of the design. It is not that we do not like Apple; we do and are inspired by their focus on users and usage - But we wanted to design a loudspeaker that has its own design language and style - and is just as happy playing music from HTC, Samsung, Sony and Nokia phones as Apples iPhone's. That guided the design development in the direction of the db60 active speaker being very, very easy to use and having great looks that intentionally puts it on the border between a speaker and a piece of modern furniture/interior design.
DDT : We wanted to design an easy-to-use active speaker that has its own character and silhouette while blending in perfectly with interior decors.
DDT : We are currently well-underway in readying the db60 speaker for production using Kickstarter as the funding platform. We expect to go online in Q3 2013
DDT : The design idea process and physical design took around one and a half month. Afterwards the work on ME, development of the PCB, soundimage and accoustics have been going on for about 7 months.
DDT : At DNgroup (our design office) we have worked closely with many clients worldwide in developing and designing loudspeakers. We started an internal design competition to see what we could come up with having no client restraints, the focus being on smaller, active speakers - db60 was one of the resulting designs from that competition.
DDT : Our plan is to produce the db60 speaker our selves. We are doing the last details these months on the final product and plan to use Kickstarter as a funding platform in Q3, 2013
DDT : Yes, we work together as a team at DNgroup. Daily input and dicussions help shape the different work and designs we do.
DDT : The targeted customer for the speaker is a male/female smartphone user between 20 and 45 years of age.
DDT : The market is filled with bluetooth speakers today. We think our design sets itself apart from the big crowd by having a design that is the perfect mix of an elegant speaker and a modern piece of interior design. Our many years of experience in designing loudspeakers will result in great sound and design at an affordable price.
DDT : db60 - has some its inspiration from 60db (decibel). 60 decibel is characterized as a normal and comfortable conversation level. Also both the letters d and b looks a lot like the iconic shape of the speaker. We liked the simplicity of the decibel story and the short name.
DDT : The iconic shape - we like the idea of it being a speaker with a wing stuck to the side - it's got a certain humorous twist to it. It is a serious speaker/interior design object, but it does not take itself to serious.
DDT : Florent Gatin - Acoustic engineer (France), Brian - Electrical engineer (Taiwan), Jakob Normand - industrial designer (DNgroup), Frederick Rickmann, designer (DNgroup), Bjarke Mejnertsen - design engineer (DNgroup), Sherry Chin - designer (Dngroup), Cosmina Rotaru - Marketing (DNgroup) Patrick Johansen - designer (DNgroup), Suzanne Steecklenburg - admin (DNgroup)
DDT : It is in the backgorund - we want the speaker to be a no-hazzle product. The design has NO buttons. Bluetooth "wakes" on input, also the speaker "wakes" from standby on earphone jack connection. This means no difficult connection setups - truly easy to use. And as a realy usefull user feature, we have added a USB port under the wing for charging your mobile device, when placed on the wing.
DDT : Based on intuition, user insights and a strong belief in good design
DDT : We hoped - of course - that we had a chance of winning, and will use that as a springboard for commercialization
