The evolution of smartphone designing

I don’t lord over Oppo but I wish I did. But yeah, it’s a great job. It’s a fun job.

Nandagopal Rajan: I just wanted to make you feel good.

Damyant Singh: Thank you. Thank you.

Nandagopal Rajan: That’s how all of us journalists are taught how to sort of lul the person you’re interviewing into soft sort of —

Damyant Singh: Soften them up!

Nandagopal Rajan: Soften them up exactly. Yeah, so this week, we have a very interesting topic and a topic that doesn’t get a lot of attention in the, you know, in the smartphone scheme of things, because very few people very few companies actually talk a lot about design. But design is a very important part of any smartphone, as we have known. And even when you pick up a smartphone, you know that design does make a difference. Damyant, how important is design when it comes to a company like Oppo?

Damyant Singh: Yeah Nandu, so generally speaking, the whole DNA of Oppo is built around, you know, this notion of creating technology that’s friendly. Like literally if I give you the appeal of Oppo it’s to create technology for mankind. And the whole notion is essentially design should lend itself in a way where it almost goes into the background, where it allows people to seamlessly enjoy some very, very technologically advanced products in very simple forms. And I think design both plays a role in the physical form factor, as we may call it. And there’s also the human interface factor, which is ColorOS, for example, right. So I think design plays a pretty critical role in not just in the physical dimension, but also in designing literally the interaction between a human being and the product. In many ways, design is probably the backbone of any good tech company. And Oppo is no different in this, the way we kind of look at design and how we treat Design Engineering at OPppo.

Nandagopal Rajan: In fact, I have a small anecdote that this is from many years ago, when the first Oppo phones hadn’t come to India. And they were sort of looking at the market. And I got to use the OPPO N9 I think and you know, with rotating camera, but what really blew me away was the box. There is a pristine white box, which was not made of cardboard, just like plasticky box, and it was like very different from anything out there in the market at that time. And when you open the fold, again, the design completely blew me away, because it is a very different design from anything that is out there in the market. And the build quality wasn’t something that I was really ready for. Because again, it was very, it felt like something that was very different from what is available, you know, seven, eight years back. So I understand that if I’ve been using the Find Nine for the past week or so. And I can see how, the way I have put it is that you have forgotten the first mover advantage in the foldable space and come into the middle of that space with such a robust design, right? Because you didn’t have the the loose hinges at herbert, literally are the creases that you know, we got to see in the other folders. So as you’re designing or thinking about a new phone, is design something that comes in very early in the thought process, or is it something that okay, ultimately goes into a design that works with the rest of the product?

Damyant Singh: Actually, Nandu, you know, quite honestly, the way design thinking is a process that we feel should revolve around this notion of solving problems by prioritizing what the consumers really need above all else. And so as a company, what we really do is rely heavily on observation on almost empathizing with what consumers are kind of going through and how they’re consuming technology, how do they interact with their product with the environment? So basically, what we have at Oppo is a very iterative, interactive process of letting consumer needs dictate what forms the functions take. Right. So for example, even in case of the foldable phone that you’re talking about, the notion of creating a foldable phone wasn’t about are we going to be the first to market with it, because like you said, rightly, that race was won. But just because somebody has done it first doesn’t mean it can’t be done better. And so I think our point of view on Find N for example, was basically is there a better expression of a foldable phone that makes it even more enjoyable for you to use that form factor in a richer way? And I think so at Oppo that’s really what dictates how we design our products. It’s got to do a lot with AD aesthetics, which is pretty obvious. But you know, at its core, it’s also about how are we making life simpler? How are we bringing more meaning to the design stories that really putting out there into the world? And then literally like what you said, the unboxing experience? How do we design that in a way where people and I say this quite often in the office, right? A smartphone is probably the third most expensive thing you buy in your life and probably the most expensive thing you buy at regularly over the course of your life. So it’s a moment and I think at Oppo we really want to give consumers a sense of delight when they buy our products and every time they use it. And if you think like that design becomes very important, very obvious thing to really focus your energies around. So I think at Oppo that’s really been our philosophy and I think whether it’s the soon to be launched Reno 7 or pretty much any product we’ve launched in the last decade and a half of being in the tech industry, you know, design has been something which is a part of our DNA, we like making beautiful products.

Nandagopal Rajan: So the consumer, like solving the consumer problem, it’s not as easy as it sounds right? Because you have to be literally ahead of the curve. Of course, you get a lot of feedback from customers based on existing products. But you also need to think what you know, maybe they need, you know, in the coming year or the year after that. Or you need to plot the trajectory of technology and have design catch it at some point, like, you know, how do you fit this kind of technology, like, you know, the foldable, for instance, that’s going to become common two years down the line, what kind of a design sort of fits for it? Or what kind of design, you know, doesn’t look gimmicky, but it solves the customer problem? How do you interact with the customer? How do you get that feedback? How do you think ahead?

Damyant Singh: Yeah, like I said, In the beginning, a lot of it is simply to do with observation, like, for example, form factors, like the evolution of just the form factor of a smartphone, smartphones become taller or wider, but there’s a still a golden ratio to what feels intuitively right in your hand. I think it’s as much about predicting what consumers and where technology might go in the future. But I think it’s at its core, it’s really about, like I said, in the beginning, design thinking and keeping this ethos of being human centric, and basically using how consumers actually engage with a product or an experience and letting that dictate how you design products. So personally, I feel the best articulation of design is simplicity. And this is very famous, quote, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” And just going through this process of sacrificing, making a choice on behalf of the consumer saying we can take this away, we can simplify the choices for consumer, like all of these aspects, I think which come from the sense of observing and being intuitively aligned to saying “how do I make my consumers journey of using my product simpler and richer” instead of you know, saying, “Can I jam in 200 megapixel camera, for argument’s sake, right?” Going down this path of saying, “you know, my phone, my product, my company should be about the latest and greatest hardware”, instead of really kind of putting consumers at the center of everything and saying, like, “Are we going to create something which is meaningful in the in the lives of consumers? Or are we simply bunging in tech because it makes our job of selling our products easier?” So I think philosophically design is one which is the best articulation is when you kind of put consumer needs and consumer behavior at the center of how you design your product. So yeah, that’s I think what we do.

Nandagopal Rajan: In doing that, and being a global company are there challenges because you know, what the consumer likes or the aesthetics in one part of the world might not be the aesthetics in another part of the world, even in a country like India, and we have seen how like, you know, aesthetics or cultural sensibilities are very different in different parts. How do you neutralize that? You have companies like Apple, which go to the extreme of neutralizing it by being very crossover in whatever they do. But when you have to put in color and bring in some other features, that becomes a little bit difficult. How do you work on something like that? How do you customize for regions or sensibilities?

Damyant Singh: Look, any company that’s operating at scale like Oppo, it’s very difficult to start customizing design based on regional preferences. I think you can do that with color options, etc. But at its core, you can’t really kind of designed products for regions, especially in the tech industry. I’ll give you an example of you know how from a philosophical standpoint, we at Oppo try and bring in pathbreaking design into our products. For example, right I’ll give you the simple example of an upcoming launch we’ve got the launch of the Oppo Reno 7 that’s coming up shortly. And we’ve got a couple of really interesting things from a design standpoint in this product. So the first one is something that was previously called Reno Glow, but now we have moved on to this notion of calling it the Oppo Glow. And so what is this about now if you think about the design of a product, one of the most annoying things is having or seeing smudges on your phone, you use it to keep it down and suddenly you like see fingerprints, etc. So it’s not really a rich experience because literally what one would end up doing was you keep the phone down and then you lift it and you rub it against your denim, you kind of clean it up and then put it back. So it’s a simple enough thing. So at Oppo the way we’ve kind of solved for this is the company developed a design technology called Reno Glow and over a period of time we’ve gone through like generations of refinements on this and we’ve now rebranded it and we call it Oppo Glow. And so literally what Oppo Glow is it basically creates millions of tiny microscopic crystals on the back cover. And what this does is gives the phone a glittering effect a visual effect like a shimmering starry sky. But what goes into this is this really painstaking process to create this frosted glass material which is durable but also gives you like a silky smooth feel. So every time you pick up your phone, you genuinely feel that you’ve got a thing of beauty in your hands. And so what we’ve done with the new generation is we’ve used something called LDI technology. It’s basically something which is aircraft grade Laser Direct Imaging. It’s basically a process where we use chemical etching and we use acid washing technologies to kind of give you this frosted glass material which has got this silky smooth feel. If you think about LDI, it’s usually used to design printed circuit boards in the aviation industry. But at Oppo our designers, and our developers, and our engineering team basically said “Let’s repurpose this to create 1.2 million micro etchings in just 20 microns in width and across the surface of the handset. Let’s give this really amazing finish and feel to the product and wouldn’t it be a joy if our consumers could enjoy something this complicated in as simple a product form as a smartphone?” So the design philosophy of the Reno 7, for example, is inspired by the LDI technology that’s borrowed from the aircraft industry or from the aviation industry. And I just feel like engineering teams, learning from different industries and bringing that design philosophy and really complicated engineering into products that are used in everyday life, I think there’s a beauty to that, I’m sure when you see the product yourself, you will genuinely feel the painstaking detail and the eye for detail that kind of has gone into something which is as simple as the back cover of your phone, but we feel like there are sometimes some very beautiful ways in which you can use and leverage technology and harness the power of modern technology to bring something really, really unique and beautiful, and put that out into the world. So yeah, so I think that’s something that we continuously push ourselves to do it.

Nandagopal Rajan: So it’s interesting that you spoke about the material used in the back cover, and the back cover is a place where a lot of conversation happens around: plastic, glass, metal. So how do you tackle that challenge? Is it more of a price call or a cost call? Or is it something like do you have to think of offering you know, the best materials at the lowest prices? How does that work?

Damyant Singh: So like everything you said, is a consideration when you design. Because it’d be silly for me to say no, no price is not something that we care about, like you obviously hit — need to hit a certain FOB, right, you need to hit a certain price band. But within that, it’s always about how are we within a — so for argument’s sake, you’ve given yourself $100, I’m just giving you a notional number, but you’ve given yourself $100 to create or put that into the design element of the phone. I think the thinking really is about how are we pushing the boundaries of what that $100 allows you to do or enable you to do so that you’re able to in a mid-segment phone, or in a product, which is hitting a certain price band, genuinely able to give consumers a sense of wonder of what they’re buying. So literally, a lot of times we discuss this notion of the democratization of technology. And so there’s democratization in terms of getting 5G to cheaper handsets, etc. But from a design standpoint, like if you look at a device, which today costs about, say 18-20,000 rupees, or in the case of the Reno series, for example, in the mid 30s, 30,000 price bracket, the products that you are buying now in that price segment are comparable to the best in the world. And I think it’s simply about, no longer a question about when you’re spending, say, for example, 35-40,000 rupees, “What am I compromising on? What am I losing out on as a consumer?” It’s no longer that. So from our perspective, it’s about “How do we make sure that you feel as much pride about a product that you’re buying in that segment, which has got as much technology packed into it, which has a factor of us leveraging design in a way, which genuinely feels uplifting? How do we make that possible?” So yes, price is a consideration. But eventually, you know, I think the choices are made on the back of “Will we be able to kind of give this product to a consumer and will that consumer enjoy using this product for a period of 2,3,4 years? Will he feel proud and amazed with what he’s got in his pocket over a course of 36 to 40 months?” We obviously hope they don’t get bored of the design. But you know, how do we make sure that that sense of wonder, and that sense of joy that you take from a product stays for as long as it can. So it’s a tricky one, you know, you always want to kind of put in more. So that’s one aspect. The other one is basically there are some kinds of features that can only be enabled if the materials are for certain kind, right? So if you, for example, you need to kind of have wireless charging, for example, that requires glass, right, so that’s a very obvious one. So you can’t not have glass, we won’t have wireless charging. So some costs are dictated by tech, others are dictated by this notion of wanting to make sure we give something amazing to consumers. And then there are some costs and related to your story from one of my previous jobs. I basically asked like, why do we keep removing stuff, which seems to be very useful. And this is the headphone jack, for those of you who are curious, basically, like, why did we remove the headphone jack in a product like in my previous company? And the answer to that was, the reason we get rid of some things and replace them is because we have a line of sight over what’s going to be important to consumers in three, four or five years time. So the decision of sacrificing something that feels really intuitive right now might not necessarily be required or might not necessarily be needed in the future. So you need to sometimes make bold calls about what you change in your product design. And the other part is you literally need to kind of think of a smartphone from a product standpoint as being possibly the most expensive real estate there is in the world. If you think about the Reno 7, for example, it’s like you’re literally paying close to 40,000 rupees for something that like fits in your in a pocket, right? And so what do you pack into this so that everything that’s in the product and the way it looks and feels genuinely belongs there? Right that it earns its right to be on this really expensive piece of real estate. So design calls are obviously like never easy, but lots of lots of considerations that kind of go into choices around how product eventually is designed.

Nandagopal Rajan: So Damyant the other thing, and it touches upon what you’ve been talking about, is that you know often brands have a design language like you know, their phones look the same. Or you look at a phone you immediately know it’s a phone from a certain brand. But the flip side of that is that a lot of consumers may be coming back to buy a new version of a phone three years down the line feels that, hey, it looks a lot like the earlier phone I had. So how do you balance that? That’s also tricky thing, right? How do you do that?

Damyant Singh: Yeah, well, it’s tricky. And like, I think there are probably two or three kinds of form factors possible on a smartphone, right, you can have flat edges, you can have curved edges. And that’s pretty much it. And you can of course, wrap the screen over it, etc, etc. So I think for me those changes while they’re important, for me, what’s important is the hand-feel. And so for me, like the visual aesthetic can’t beyond a point change too much. There are some really smart ways in which you can add value in the design language of a product, which I feel is more meaningful than simply making something which is flat, or curved, etc. And it’s basically being smart about how you leverage what the real estate of the phone allows you to do. I’ll give you another example. What we’ve got in the Reno seven, for example, now, and I feel this is one of the most interesting uses of the camera bump is basically what we’ve done on the Reno 7 is we’ve complemented the back surface with reenvisioning the rear camera module, right. So we’ve all kind of enjoyed/suffered the camera bump from a design standpoint, but nobody literally has been smart about what they did with that camera bump. So it was literally something which is an inconvenient truth about not having a fully flat phone any longer because cameras needed more, the lens needed more space. So what we’ve done is with a new Twin Moon camera design, we’ve got the upper half, which is kind of decorated with metal, the lower half is coated with ceramic. So it kind of gives you like this really premium feel. But more importantly, that camera bump around the camera modules that come we’ve introduced something that we calling 3D breathing lights, and it’s basically a one mm diameter fiber, which is bent around the frame of the camera. And so whenever you receive a call or a message, or when you’re charging the phone, the fiber basically emits a soft, pulsating light, you know, and what that does is basically as you’ve kept your phone down that camera bump or the breathing lights come on, if you have a phone call, or if you’re kind of charging a phone. So it’s a very smart way of using that space and bringing value, right? It’s not simply saying, “Oh, it will flash because it will flash” It will flash with a purpose, it will flash with a meaning. And again, it is something which I feel is is a very intelligent way of designing something to bring meaningful technology and meaningful innovation into the lives of our consumers. So that’s like another example of of something which is a fun, new element in from a design standpoint.

Nandagopal Rajan: So I’ve taken a lot of your time. One last question Damyant. How important is the theater that no design can offer? Like, you know, you have a rotating camera, you have a sharkfin camera that pops up, or a camera that goes down, which is motorized, how important at least to do it once in a year or once in a couple of years, almost tell your consumer that “Hey, we are capable of doing all these things. Maybe we are not doing it in the phone you are buying.”

Damyant Singh: Yeah, personally I am not big on this design storytelling, right. Personally. Like if you asked me my personal senses don’t kind of necessarily align with this philosophy of you know, having popup or differentiated rotating camera like I think for me, I prefer simplicity in design. And if there’s a meaningful difference, or there’s a meaningful purpose for the horse and pony show, if I might call it that, in the design, then so be it. But if you’re doing it purely because or if a brand is doing it purely because it wants to grab the attention of consumers for a couple of months or you know wants to stand out on the back of something like that, I find it gimmicky. And I think one of the things that would upgrade design should not be gimmicky. Great design should give you pleasure when you see it, great design should inspire you, great design should want to make like literally make you want to replicate something like that in your own life, right, it should make the world around you more, more beautiful. Like I just don’t enjoy gimmicky design personally.

Nandagopal Rajan: You know, it can also be good marketing, right, in a way? Like, you know, it gets you a lot more eyeballs than your regular design.

Damyant Singh: Maybe it does, right. But if I feel as an individual, and I’m talking more as a consumer than like the CMO of Oppo right now, right? But as an individual, if a company is trying to sell me something gimmicky, I’ll probably catch on to it, and maybe I’ll enjoy it for a day or two. But do you want to blow up the internet for a couple of days? Or do you want to kind of bring meaning into consumers lives? And I’m a fan of the latter, right? I don’t want to own the internet because I’ve done something street smart. And there is a place for it, of course, right? I’m not saying like nobody should do it. But I just feel intuitively what I enjoy more is timeless design, so to speak. Something which is done for the right reasons, like to the point you were making that if it’s simply about “I’m going to make noise in the market, and people will remember me for three days,” I don’t personally enjoy that kind of marketing. Honestly, I prefer a little bit more meat to the storytelling. I prefer a little bit more contextuality, I prefer there being meaningful innovation. So don’t use very often. But I think even in design, you know, being able to meaningfully change something, is for me a lot better than simply having something which is rotating, revolving or somersaulting.

Nandagopal Rajan: So as you heard from Damyant, you know, design has to be there to solve a problem. It needs to be purposeful and it should not be there just for the heck of it. Damyant it was fascinating listening to you and how Oppo is thinking about design of existing and future products. Thanks for being on the show.

Damyant Singh: Thanks Nandu, real pleasure chatting with you.

Nandagopal Rajan: This is Nandagopal Rajan:m saying bye again. We’ll be back again with a new guest next week and we are available everywhere you listen to your podcasts.

Snigdha Sharma: You were listening to Our Own Devices with Nandagopal Rajan: by The Indian Express. This week’s show was edited and mixed by Suresh Pawar and produced by Anant Nath Sharma and me, Snigdha Sharma. If you liked the show, do share it on your social media handles and do not forget to tag us. We go by @expressaudio. You can find us on Twitter and on Instagram. Also, if you have any feedback, please do write to us at podcast@indianexpress.com