DI: What is the main principle, idea and inspiration behind your design?
: 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.
DI: What has been your main focus in designing this work? Especially what did you want to achieve?
: I tried to get rid of tech to make the design more human being.
DI: What are your future plans for this award winning design?
: 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.
DI: How long did it take you to design this particular concept?
: It takes me about 5 months to lock down the final design. We work with R&D team closely to achieve the design goals.
DI: Why did you design this particular concept? Was this design commissioned or did you decide to pursuit an inspiration?
: 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.
DI: Is your design being produced or used by another company, or do you plan to sell or lease the production rights or do you intent to produce your work yourself?
: We have launched the product and sell through China market online.
DI: What made you design this particular type of work?
: I am looking for innovation chance all the time. Innovation based on flexible display is an opportunity.
DI: Where there any other designs and/or designers that helped the influence the design of your work?
: No, there are many designers involved in this project before I am in, but they are all quit with their concept.
DI: Who is the target customer for his design?
: 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.
DI: What sets this design apart from other similar or resembling concepts?
: Our product is the first commercial foldable smartphone that released globally, and it's also a reasonably priced product available on the open market.
DI: How did you come up with the name for this design? What does it mean?
: Product name given by our Branding Department, “Pai” means a kind of style.
DI: Which design tools did you use when you were working on this project?
: Many tools, such as Pro-Engineering, Rhino, Photoshop, illustrator and key shot.
DI: What is the most unique aspect of your design?
: Flexible screen tech.
DI: Who did you collaborate with for this design? Did you work with people with technical / specialized skills?
: I worked closely with experts from different fields which include flexible screen experts & mechanical motion specialists, also the UED Design expert team.
DI: What is the role of technology in this particular design?
: First generation flexipai ’s design is driven by Hi-tech (Flexible Display and hinge).
DI: What are some of the challenges you faced during the design/realization of your concept?
: The most difficult thing is to make R&D believe that each solution need a chance to try; for innovation, we cannot say no.
DI: How did you decide to submit your design to an international design competition?
: This innovation product worth to be known for all the people.
DI: What did you learn or how did you improve yourself during the designing of this work?
: 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.