HTC design team offer insight into 8X and 8S

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In this video the design team at HTC offer some insights into the design process for the Windows Phone 8X and 8S by HTC. Nichole Rouillac, Senior Industrial Designer, explains how the devices are inspired "by the Metro tiles and how clear and simple it is". Claude Zellweger, Creative Director, says the design "takes out the complexity and make things easier for people to understand".

HTC's design team is playing an ever more important role in the creation of company's products. The Android powered One series and Windows Phone 8 series represent the current pinnacle of a long running strategy to put design at the heart of HTC's product creation process. It's far to say, based on our hands-on with the new devices and the initial reactions from technology watchers, that the team, with the 8X, has succeeded in creating an iconic design that should significantly burnish HTC's design credentials.

Video description:

HTC designed the Windows Phone 8X and 8S to blend the virtual and the physical utilizing a three dimensional, unibody-style based on the Windows Phone Live Tiles. These smartphones are perfectly sculpted with a dramatic taper making them feel thin in your hand.

In the video, embedded below, the importance of colour is emphasised, the video describes how HTC went through "hundreds and hundreds of different resins", looking at "transparency and opacity issues", "colour intensity" and the pigment required to retain a certain amount of vibrancy.

There's also a discussion of the challenges involved, with "real estate at a premium" the design and engineering teams had to work closely together. It was necessary to be "clever about stretching components" in order to achieve the device's distinctive shape. Moreover, many of the design teams biggest achievements are invisible, for example, the average user will never see the customised components, but will only see a design that "looks impossible". 

Source / Credit: YouTube