problem

I was given the assignment to design a cell phone for teenagers.

brainstorming

The first step was to play with a bunch of different sketches and see which ones worked best with high school students.

refinement

Talking to high school students about cell phones told me that they weren't allowed to use or have them on campus. If a teacher saw one, it would be confiscated. So I decided to hide the phone in a wallet.

I worked on refining the idea and I spent a lot of time on getting the keypad alignment correct since while I was testing the the arrangement, I noticed that people dial in a number of different ways.

final

I built all of the final presentation prototype, including the wallet. Since I didn't have the time to learn how to sew, I had to staple and glue the wallet together. The phone part is made of three layers of clear acrylic, the top layer has been lasercammed to make the buttons and screen cutout.