For many ugly years, manufacturers considered industrial design an afterthought. They would outsource the task to a contractor or neglect it altogether, in an effort to get products out quickly and cheaply.
The result: hideous-looking products that didn’t work well or proved difficult to use.
Nowadays, companies like Apple are changing the game when it comes to incorporating industrial design and user experience into product engineering.
On this episode of Kahney’s Korner, I talk with Oliver Seil, senior design director with Belkin International’s Innovation and Design Group. Seil is Belkin’s Jony Ive, the top designer who overseas the company’s diverse array of products.
Belkin specializes in mobile accessories, from power packs and iPhone cases to WeMo home automation products
Key Takeaways:
- What does Belkin International do?
- Cables and Mobile accessory manufacturer
- Headquartered in Los Angeles, CA
- Prides itself on producing quality products that are innovative and sophisticated
- Why should I pay more for a cable or accessory?
- The more cables become universal, the more complex they become to make
- Paying more for cable is perceived as luxury
- Risk in doing damage to device by choosing cheaper inferior product
- How to make Industrial Design successful part of product development
- Bring it in house – Belkin developed internal “Innovation Design Group” 17 years ago.
- Include as part of process from very beginning
- What it means to be an industrial designer
- Understand what the end user wants
- Build relationship with the consumer through all touchpoints, including the packaging
- Predict what the consumer might want to do and develop the path for them to intuitively act.
Connect with Oliver Seil:
Learn More About Oliver Seil:
About Kahney’s Korner
Kahney’s Korner is a weekly podcast about the world of Apple. It’s a big Apple world out there, and there are tons of great, fascinating stories to tell.
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Episode
Kahney’s Korner #9: How Belkin’s In-House Industrial Design is Changing the Industry, with Oliver Seil, Senior Design Director at Belkin International. Subscribe to Kahney’s Korner on iTunes or Google Play.
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Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
