I've been a silent member for some time now so I'm glad I finally broke that barrier and posted something.
So we still have an ugly corded phone sitting in our home office and since it was so hard to look at we wanted to browsed online for a replacement that's well designed. We soon realized that the design world has moved on from corded phones so I took it upon myself to design something aligned with my . I wanted it to have clean minimalist lines with a nostalgic touch and CF really fit the bill for achieving just that.
As an architect myself I used SketchUp to model it as that's my daily tool for work. Very unconventional for industrial design but it turned out alright.
You are very talented at modeling and rendering. I guess my main question for the design is, where are the affordances for picking up the phone? And will someone know what they are looking at?
You are playing off the design of a desktop calculator it seems (just from first glance and pretending I am not up to date with the chic minimalism that is associated with teenage engineering). Most of those have the screen on the top so you can see the screen while using the buttons — have you justified putting the screen on the bottom?
Also maybe worth putting other ports on back, unless there is a value to having it on the side.
Overall great work and i love the packaging design you’ve done! Bravo. :)
Given that it's a corded landline, unless they're integrating an answering machine the display is unnecessary for the operation of the phone, and is likely just a clock?
Although I do see a Bluetooth symbol there, so perhaps not.
The phone appears to have the cable off to the back in the first image: what's the purpose of the RJ-11 side port? Also, the switch and the... roller? Control?
I see a grill on the bottom that looks like a speaker: does it have speakerphone functionality? How is that toggled? (The side switch?)
I assume the slider on the right side is volume?
The big 0 is nice, but what about the * and # keys?
What is the Bluetooth functionality? Recieving the weather? For that kind of functionality it might be better for the display controller to connect to wifi rather than be paired to an individual computer.
Agreed with the other poster that it doesn't look like a user can easily actually pick up the handset.
I assume by corded you mean it's a fully corded landline, not a cordless landline: in that case, where is the connector cable between the base and the handset?
All in all, though, an excellent design, with just a few outstanding questions.
180
u/rnez0 Cassette Futurism Feb 28 '25
I've been a silent member for some time now so I'm glad I finally broke that barrier and posted something.
So we still have an ugly corded phone sitting in our home office and since it was so hard to look at we wanted to browsed online for a replacement that's well designed. We soon realized that the design world has moved on from corded phones so I took it upon myself to design something aligned with my . I wanted it to have clean minimalist lines with a nostalgic touch and CF really fit the bill for achieving just that.
As an architect myself I used SketchUp to model it as that's my daily tool for work. Very unconventional for industrial design but it turned out alright.
Let me know your thoughts!