RIM SVP Todd Wood Talks About the BlackBerry Design Process

by Ronen Halevy on November 15th, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Posted in News

RIM has been slowly getting more into design over the last few years talking about it more and more. They even briefed the media on the BlackBerry Bold 9900 design when it was announced along with sacrificing the autofocus camera for the sleek thin design. That is what I was very interested to read this new interview of RIM Senior VP for Industrial Design Todd Wood by Pocket-Lint out in London. They sat down with Todd to talk about the latest in BlackBerry design and got some interesting new tidbits out of him.

Todd interestingly compares the RIM product line to a small menu because “I like restaurants with small menus because it shows they are good at those things. Too many choices mean they aren’t good for anything.” he continued describing the main Torch, Pearl, Curve, and Bold lines saying “Someone has to say that’s enough salt or pepper,” Wood continues with his culinary analogy, “but it’s not just about saying ‘no’.”

The most interesting part of the whole interview is that Todd says that the BlackBerry design team heads to a different location around the world to get inspiration for every device. For the latest BlackBerry 7 devices that was Bellagio, Italy. The latest design for 2012 BlackBerrys is from Malmo, Sweden which is supposed to be “Charming, Whimsical, and Fun” which are not words I would use to describe the rumored BlackBerry London leaked picture.

According to Todd “Products should wear in rather than wear out” and I have to totally agree with him on that one though it should include the OS and not just the design. I highly recommend checking out the full interview over at Pocket-Lint.

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Reuters Suddenly Realizes RIM SVP, Jim Tobin, Left RIM 2+ Months Ago…

You have to love wall streets obsession with RIM remodeling their management structure. First these analysts and investors were clamoring for a shakeup in management and cleaning up house. Now when they see RIM doing just that they complain that RIM is firing people. The latest one Reuters all of a sudden caught on to months later is Jim Tobin who used to be SVP of the Software, Services & Enterprise Markets business unit at RIM.

Last I checked he was let go a little over 2 months ago together with Jeff McDowell, who was SVP of platform marketing and alliances. They also let go Vincent Washington who was heading up RIM Sports, Tyler Lessard, Mike Kirkup, , etc along with thousands of others throughout RIM. Some of these employees that were forced out, laid off, quit dramatically, or found better opportunities were extremely talented people but RIM is in the middle of a drastic platform shift and many acquisitions which leads to redundancies… RIM bought a new enterprise platform Ubitexx which is set to replace and prop up BES. They acquired QNX which is RIM’s new development platform… These are key pieces that are currently sitting side by side with departments run by the old guard of RIM execs.

The thing I don’t get is why Wall Street doesn’t see the management change up as exactly what they asked for? I cannot read the minds of RIM’s upper management but this is something that they started way back in 2009 when they started considering QNX and a whole new platform. The similarities to what they did back when they expanded from enterprise to consumer and their acquisitions back then look awfully like what they are doing now.

What do you think? Many of these people will be sorely missed but this seems to be exactly what RIM needs now. You can catch up with Jim Tobin on Twitter or his blog that he started up again two months ago…

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