IIIF150 - Bringing Color and Design to Rugged Phone

Introduction Back in September 2020, the creative team of IIIF150 had just been established. After a long period of market research, the team members decided to target the main track at "Rugged Phone". In this segment, there are already many competitors. In addition to the basic abilities of rugged, some pursue functional differentiation such as adding thermal imaging sensor, the other prefer the ultimate outdoor capabilities in terms of range, high and low temperature resistance and etc, And also， some focus on B-side industry (e.g. delivery) as their own market segment to cultivate. As a team with more than ten years of experience in cell phone design and R&D, the question for IIIF150 creative team members was: how to disassemble the functional elements of the rugged phone into user experience elements, and what are the shortcomings of the existing competing products that deserve IIIF150 to take the whole industry to improve. Firstly，the team divided the rugged phone into rugged ability and smartphone.As a cell phone, we need to focus on the screen, battery life, processor, camera, signal, system stability, smoothness and other basic experience.But for a rugged one, waterproof dust-proof and crash-proof are more important. All of this for product design and development would translate into the certification of IP68,IP69K and STD-810G. For the R&D team, all the rugged ability could be solved by experience and innovation. Color After finishing the first step, Jessica, the product manager, suddenly realized a problem: "Why are all the similar products thick and black "bricks"? Long battery life requires a larger battery, high strength requires stronger materials, which can only explain why all of them heavy, but can not explain why all black. "Dig out the secret from other brands' suppliers and products ! " The team decided after a brainstorming meeting. The answer is that they had chosen a balance of material cost and wear resistance. This black material is soft rubber (soft plastic) which we would like to use in daily life, like tires . The advantage of this material is frugal and tough, but it can only be black. The smartphone is not only a phone, but also a personalized social currency after more than 1 decade revolution. Black is a cool color, but only black, which seems boring. Imagine a world with only black and white, and then imagine a world with only black. So，color innovation was made be one of the most important directions of IIIF150. After looking for dozens of suppliers, IIIF150 finally decided to use polycarbonate as the substrate, while debugging different colors to constantly test the waterproof and wear-resistant performance . After passing all the reliability tests, the prototype still maintained an excellent level of wear and tear.Because of the successful test, our first product B2021 of IIIF150 was taken inspiration from the Sahara desert in summer and introduced our main color and named it Sahara, while still exposing the Rock Black color to satisfy the same demand for black. It is worth mentioning that the standard color of Rock Black became the color continuity of all subsequent IIIF150 products. As a latecomer, IIIF150 is willing to give users who try color a more personalized choice, and we are also willing to keep an option forever for rugged phone lovers who prefer classic black. Design What is design? For commercial products, IIIF150 believes that design is to turn disorder into order and use design to serve function. Also, IIIF150 must have a continued family design language as a brand. This is not only the requirement of IIIF150 team for their own design, but also the most intuitive way to enable more and more users to understand a company with attitude and pursuit of design. For the rugged phone, what is behind the rugged capability to convey to the user is actually safe and reliable. So it's appearance must be tough and able to convey this feeling mentioned above. "Good artists copy, great artists steal" . This statement is not to let the product deliberately imitate, stealing refers to being able to understand the original product under the premise of incorporating their own ideas. After brainstorming many scenarios and products such as life-saving equipment, firefighting equipment and off-road vehicles, IIIF150 finally chose to incorporate the front face of the off-road vehicle into the IIIF150 product. As one of the best tools to conquer the outdoors, off-road vehicles have always played one of the most important roles, and the tough brave and dareful spirit core of off-road vehicles is also highly consistent with the core conveyed by outdoor cell phone products. The family language of the car comes from the front face. After collecting the following information Considering that cell phone products have been using multi-camera combinations for a long time, and that the other brand has also gathered almost all of its industrial innovation in the camera area. We decided to incorporate the octagonal elements into every aspect of the design that focuses on the camera area of the phone for a long time. The product portfolio with the B series as the beginning, the R series as the flagship, and the H series as the entry model has also continued to implement and continue this design language