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Microsoft KIN One
Dennis Hissink : April 13th 2010 - 11:20 CET
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 Navigate through your social life with Microsoft KIN One : Microsoft announced the KIN One, a Windows phone designed for people who are actively navigating their social lives. The Microsoft KIN One is designed to be the ultimate social experience that blends the phone, online services and the PC with breakthrough new experiences called the Loop, Spot and Studio. For Pioneer Studios creative director Jon Friedman, it’s not symphonies or sunsets that inspire great design. It’s the little things we work with every day. “It’s the way we use garbage cans or soap dispensers,” says Friedman, who works in the Microsoft group named for Seattle’s Pioneer Square. “In every little problem there’s an opportunity for a better design.”
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Next generation Microsoft KIN One touch screen phone
Friedman says that approach played a big role in Microsoft’s next generation of social phones, called KIN, which the company launched today. The new Microsoft KIN One touch-screen phone combines a sleek, compact form factor with software that helps users discover, share and interact with friends and family online. The Microsoft KIN One cell phone, available this spring through Verizon Wireless in the U.S. and later this year through Vodafone in Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.K., let users organize and experience their social media feeds, video, messages and more, and share them with others as they choose.
Research in social profiles for developing KIN
KIN began, he says, with a lot of research to help understand today’s younger generation, which has grown up with social media embedded into the fabric of their lives. The research involved everything from usage statistics, to target-customer profiles, to a Web-based “consumer collaboration” group called project muse that involved some 2,000 volunteers.
Microsoft KIN One smartphone will be part of social life
As it progressed, the picture became clearer and clearer of what this socially connected generation really wants in a phone, and what they haven’t been getting from devices on the market to date. Friedman says what really stood out is how emotionally connected young people are to their phones. He says one person described leaving her phone at home as like losing an arm. Others said they have slept with their phones under the pillow. For Friedman and his team, that deep connection became a cornerstone for the design of KIN, and so the Microsoft Kin One smartphone.
Microsoft KIN designers aim for integrated social phone
When designers talk about personalization, they usually focus on colors and button styles. Letting users choose how certain things look and work is often as deep as it gets. But Friedman says the team took a different approach for the Microsoft KIN One smartphone based on what they saw with social consumers: Their connection wasn’t about the phone itself as much as it was about people, and the experiences they create and share every day. |
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