My Favorite Designs of 2007

Design is fun but creating a successful design for masses has always been an exciting challenge. Companies are shelling out millions of dollars every year to create exciting products. A significant portion of this money goes into market and product research to find user’s motivation to buy the product, their need, and product usage.

A successful product is rarely produced by an accident. Most of them come and leave without making any significant impact but some really leave their marks and catch our attention. A successful product is a perfect mix of business acumen, lots of data gathering, painstaking analysis, ideation of product, initial prototyping, user testing, and finally building the product with lots of ergonomics and aesthetics input.

2007 had seen some great products launches. I thought to put some of them together for convenience. This list is purely mine and clearly reflects my bias for technology related products. I would be happy to see your list too.

Sugar Shaker

It is an amazingly great design by Henry Keck of a simple ubiquitous household product. It has already been sold 35 million times.

Read More:

http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/home/la-hm-backstory7feb07,1,4874218.story?ctrack=3&cset=true

From Apple Store

Apple is famous for creating lifestyle products with style. They have proved themselves again and again over the years. Starting from Mac series of product to iPod to iPhone, with its innovative design and captivating aesthetics they are the definite frontrunners of the new century.

Apple iPhone

Finally Apple’s revolutionary phone, which had given sleepless nights to millions was launched. As expected, the ballyhoo was more from audiences than the company.

Read More:

http://www.apple.com/iphone/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone

Apple iPod touch

After the phenomenal success of iPhone, the iPod cult received the gift in the form of iPhone. Amazingly animated graphics combined with superb product design created another option for iPod lovers to entertain themselves.

Read More:

http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/

http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20070920/apples-ipod-touch-is-a-beauty-of-a-player-short-on-battery-life/

Apple Air

After creating sensation in phone and mp3 players, Apple created another tsunami by launching Apple Air. Apple Air is an amazing combination of aesthetics and functionality.

Read More:

http://www.apple.com/macbookair/

http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/25/macbook-air-review/

Toshiba Portege R400

Another laptop with great design and worth talking about is Toshiba Portege R400. This is the laptop that I always wanted to buy. It is always on and its screen swivels along the unique joint designed by Toshiba.

Read More:

http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/ebtext.to?page=r400_micro

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2079483,00.asp

Amazon Kindle

It has always been difficult to carry books and newspaper around while traveling in the hustle bustle of office hours. There is a good new for such avid readers as Amazon has launched its Kindle. A reading device which is capable of carrying 1000s of books with expandable memory, moreover, Kindle’s reading interface matches actual paper as there is no backlight attached to it.

Read More:

http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Amazons-Wireless-Reading-Device/dp/B000FI73MA

http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/11/amazon-kindle-meet-amazons-e-book-reader/