We had the distinct pleasure to interview award winning designer Royole Corporation about their original and creative Foldable Smartphone design work. Royole Corporation is an award-winning industrial designer, that makes our world a better place with their original foldable smartphone works.
Royole Corporation ("RC") answered Design Interview ("DI") questions about their award-winning work FlexPai Foldable Smartphone. Interview questions prepared by Frank Scott.
RC : The smartphone has no breakthrough innovation for ten years. The plan of making flexible cellphone based on our company’s strategy and technology, in terms of the idea details, the principle of this design is to make the product size as small as possible, make the product weight as light as possible and hide mechanical feature.
RC : I tried to get rid of tech to make the design more human being.
RC : Iteration and improve. Frankly, we are making a “concept” to test the market, because of its totally new, I push myself and others move forward to finishing as soon as possible instead of a perfect result, sometime even we have better options for design , we probably choose the saved one to ensure the product can be launched on time, and then to improve it.
RC : It takes me about 5 months to lock down the final design. We work with R&D team closely to achieve the design goals.
RC : This Folding product was commissioned by company Product Department. I generated the use principle of layout based on user experience research and mockup test, to folding in the middle of the device is the Original concept. I had driven R&D team to approach the original concept as expected way.
RC : We have launched the product and sell through China market online.
RC : I am looking for innovation chance all the time. Innovation based on flexible display is an opportunity.
RC : No, there are many designers involved in this project before I am in, but they are all quit with their concept.
RC : Someone who prefer a new way to play with the Mobile Device like Geeks, someone who has requirement work on mobile Device very frequency, e.g. business man hope has a big screen edit email but portable, then, Flexpai is not bad choice.
RC : Our product is the first commercial foldable smartphone that released globally, and it's also a reasonably priced product available on the open market.
RC : Product name given by our Branding Department, “Pai” means a kind of style.
RC : Many tools, such as Pro-Engineering, Rhino, Photoshop, illustrator and key shot.
RC : Flexible screen tech.
RC : I worked closely with experts from different fields which include flexible screen experts & mechanical motion specialists, also the UED Design expert team.
RC : First generation flexipai ’s design is driven by Hi-tech (Flexible Display and hinge).
RC : The most difficult thing is to make R&D believe that each solution need a chance to try; for innovation, we cannot say no.
RC : This innovation product worth to be known for all the people.
RC : What I learned from this project is that I realized the importance of design driven but not tech-driven. I am still thinking without conclusions yet.
