Teledex iPhone
Creating A New Design Language For Hospitality Phones
Teledex, the worldwide leader in telecommunications products for the global hospitality industry and a returning IDE client, asked for IDE's help in developing a brand new family of hospitality telephones. Teledex wanted to come up with a design that would set them apart from their competitors and would have specific, targeted appeal to the hospitality market. Most of their competition, in fact, consisted of designs that had been "borrowed" from their own previous hospitalilty phone designs.
Comfort and Elegance
IDE's first step was to research the décor of mid-level to high-end hotels using a list of hotels supplied by Teledex.
We also looked into some smaller hotels recognized for their room décor. From this research, we realized that a hotel
room is more than a showcase for modern or contemporary interior design; it is designed to provide a feeling of comfort
and elegance while at the same time creating a familiar, homey quality for business travelers.
With the knowledge gleaned from this research, our design team created style boards which we presented to Teledex.
Using their feedback, we began to conceptualize several new designs that would specifically address the hospitality market.
The new phones needed to look contemporary but not necessarily high-tech, steering away from the look of leading-edge office
phones which take their visual cues from computers and other high tech gadgets. The new hospitality designs needed a more
elegant, feminine quality while still conveying that they were solid and reliable - that they would withstand the rigors of
day-to-day hotel use and abuse.
Our research also showed that hotels must have the ability to configure function keys and speed dial keys to meet their own
particular user interface requirements. This meant that the keyboard portion of the new phone design needed to accommodate
custom die-cut graphic overlays which would be designed and printed by Teledex's customers.
Refinement To Final Design
From the initial ideation sketches and 2D renderings, Teledex and IDE further delineated the design direction. IDE's model
shop then went to work making foam models of the proposed designs. After several iterations, a design solution emerged that
met all the requirements of Teledex and the design team. The new family of phones would consist of two platforms:
A basic telephone with all of the normal functionality, plus modular high speed DSL and/or WiFi capability;
And an advanced touch-screen display phone with both analog and digital VoIP capability, plus integral high-speed DSL and WiFi that could be custom configured for each hotel.
The touch-screen display phone - the high-end and technically advanced member of the family - would have an adjustable viewing
angle allowing the user to select the optimum display position. From this touch-panel display, users could access advanced content,
provided by Teledex, allowing them to select from a list of local amenities such as restaurants, theater presentations, travel
information, etc.
Implementing The Design For Manufacturing
With the industrial design in place, IDE engineers and Teledex engineers worked together to partition the internal system electronics,
including the main logic PCB, daughter boards and full duplex acoustic speaker phone system. Once the internal system electronics were
defined, the IDE design team completed the engineering for all of the molded plastic parts and other mechanical parts comprising the
two new phones. All designed, of course, with an eye for DFM to insure that the telephones could be assembled efficiently at Teledex's
manufacturing facility in Asia.
Finally, IDE helped Teledex manufacture five working systems from prototype molds and tooling. These prototypes were introduced at a
major hospitality trade show in New York where they were met with rave reviews from the industry's professionals.
