In a pivotal meeting in the UK in August 2005, Chemistry was invited to work together with Motorola’s Consumer Xperience Design team (CXD) and a number of key engineers to evolve radical ideas around a slider phone that could slide and bend – in essence, a kick slider.
That meeting became the launch pad of an intensive19 months of ideation, industrial design, engineering, testing and refining, until the RIZR Z8 was proudly announced at the 3GSM WORLD CONGRESS in Barcelona, Spain.
The Z8 shows off Motorola’s skill at engineering very compact form factors embodied in an ultra powerful media phone running a full Symbian UIQ operating system.
The Big Idea
The ability for the phone to slide and then bend is an amazing achievement, providing a more ergonomic orientation that allows the handset to ‘flow’ around the speaker’s face. The teams at Chemistry and Motorola worked intensively to overcome many obstacles and finally bring the idea to life. Chemistry worked to embody the technical challenges in a format that was in line with Motorola’s strong product design identity born from the huge success of the original RAZR phone.
Chemistry's holistic approach to client support
Beyond the core design work that Chemistry carried out, the team also worked closely with key Product Managers at Motorola to help sell through the Z8 internally and get the platform onto the global Motorola product roadmap.
For this, Chemistry delivered materials such as photo realistic renderings and an animation that could be used internally for this sell through process.
Parallel to this, Chemistry also supported the engineering teams at Motorola to check manufacturing quality and part design and played a key role in helping with colour matching of multiple parts from a variety of suppliers across Asia.
“There's something different about the Z8, both on the inside and out. Parts of it look like they've been made out of green kryptonite, and when you slide it open it curves towards you like a tech-filled banana.” - CNET, UK
“it is the most impressive competition Nokia has faced at the high-end of the market for a very long time” - The Register, UK
