In the Group 2: Personal Media Section of the Personal-use Products Category, we screened cellular phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), personal computers, car navigation systems, personal audio devices and other devices and software related to media.
There 274 entries from 94 companies, of which 160 entries from 66 companies were selected for the Good Design Award. The success rate was 58.4%, the highest number for any Group in the entire Category [the highest rate in all the Categories].
This high success rate demonstrates the high level of maturity of the entries, and in our screening, we treated not only the beauty of their form, but also the completeness of their operating interface as important requirements. Another major point that we noted during the screening was how well the newest information technology was inserted into the personal devices in an appropriately easy to understand form.
I would like to use cellular phones, the category with most entries, as an example in providing a summary of the screening. It is difficult to find any clear criteria for accepting or rejecting cellura phones, and in most years, we Judges have wracked our brains over this problem. Cellular phones are no longer merely phones. Although all of them are tools for voice communication, they also serve as important gateways to data communications, with their ability to send and receive e-mail and to display web pages.
Furthermore, it is not the telephones themselves that provide these functions, but the communications businesses. Since the services provided by each communications business differ, it is meaningless to compare the advantages and disadvantages of the functions of the cellular phones as handsets. We therefore took the phones that had passed the first-stage screening, obtained their operating manuals, and read them in preparation for the second-stage screening.
In the second-stage screening, we painstakingly verified the actual operating procedures for each handset individually, and after repeated discussions among the Judges, we decided which products would receive the Good Design Award. Most of the products that failed to pass this stage of screening were those for which we could not verify the procedures, either because we compelled to follow clearly mistaken procedures or because we made mistakes with the function key, pressing it too frequently or not frequently enough.
I would like to note that, we did not make any evaluations based solely on displays of product mock-ups, no matter how sophisticated their form was.

 
The Evaluation of the Products for the Gold Prize

Products in the Personal-use Category were screened in two groups, Group 1 and Group 2, with candidates for the Gold Prize selected from each one. We determined the winners of the Gold Prize at a public Gold Prize Screening Session held on September 1.
The nominees from this Group were the Intel's "Intel Play QX3 Computer Microscope," NTT DoCoMo's PHS Modem Card "P-in Comp@ct," and Bang & Olufsen's headphones "A8," and all of them won Gold Prizes at the screening session.
Just connecting the "Intel Play QX3" into the USB port of a personal computer makes it function as a microscope offering 10 power, 60 power, and 200 power magnification. It displays the object being viewed on the monitor of the PC, allowing users to view the microscopic world clearly. Using the time-lapse shooting photography function allows users to make a continuous record of the growth of an insect or plant. We would especially like to note the fact that it eliminates the thick, heavy form typical of microscopes, since it was developed in cooperation with the toy manufacturer Mattel. We gave this product high marks for having carried out the design of a completely new type of personal media, not a mere design for the tool known as a microscope.
" P-in Comp@ct" is the world's first compact flash card 64 kbps modem card. Just inserting it into the compact flash slot of a notebook computer or PDA makes wireless communication a possibility.
The "P-in Comp@ct" is a product that takes the miniaturization technology that Japan is known for and takes the greatest possible advantage of it. However, we were especially impressed that it is not merely the smallest such device but has also been formed with the greatest delicacy, down to the last detail, all without losing the sense of being a product that one might use in obtaining data with a communications device.
The Headphone "A8," made up of aluminum and hard rubber, retains Bang & Olufsen's superb audio technology, with a comfort and beauty backed up by ergonomic technology. The three moving parts, which allow users to adjust the headphones to their own ears, give them a sense of unusually pleasant movement and fine workmanship. The appearance on the market of these headphones was long awaited, and owning them will bring users a great deal of pleasure.
As in the case of the aforementioned "P-in Comp@ct," this kind of highly precise technology and fine workmanship is something one would have expected to find in Japan's domestic industries. Products such as the "A8" would have been created in Japan in days past.

 
Future Trends

In this field, the future holds even more technological innovations in store. Designers will be required to act as translators of this technology, demonstrating a sure command of current theories and the ability to create highly original designs.
We hope for designs for devices that encourage the development and expansion of a variety of personal media, change people's everyday lives, and put the user in a more expansive mood.
Unless we think seriously about what internationally competitive design backed up by contemporary Japanese culture should be, it will be difficult for us to maintain our preeminence in this field.