MIAMI HAROLD ARTICLE ON E.DIGITAL CORPORATION
Published by berge on RB.
Published Tuesday, November 30, 1999, in the Miami Herald
DESIGNS ON THE FUTURE
BY FRED TASKER
ftasker@herald.com
THE TEAM: Ecstatic Miami-Dade's Design and Architecture Senior High (DASH) students are, from left, Michel Alvarez with his winning design, Eric Telfort, Jing Chen, Lucion Telfort, Jose Ortez and Duane Lawrence, and counselor Deborah Singer. Below is a prototype of the miniplayer Alvarez designed.
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Early next spring, if things go as planned, your teenager will be hitting you up for $200 to $250 to buy the latest really nifty gadget -- a minimusic player that fits in a shirt pocket and plays music downloaded from the Internet.
Blame Michel Alvarez, at least in part. The 18-year-old senior at Miami-Dade's Design and Architecture Senior High (DASH) magnet program just submitted the winning design for the player, which might be sold by electronics giants like Sony and Pioneer.
'There's a very good chance of this happening,' says Fred Falk, CEO of e.Digital Corp., the San Diego firm that chose Alvarez's design. 'Michel's design was very unique. There's nothing like it on the market.'
Falk says e.Digital and its venture partner, Lucent Technologies, are showing the design to companies like Sony, Pioneer, AT&T, Sharp and others that might decide to manufacture and sell it. And the design is receiving rave reviews. The player could be in stores before spring, he says.
How did an 18-year-old full-time student and weekend private-party DJ still wearing braces get in on something this big? It's a story that tells a lot about how products are developed in this lightning-paced age.
The minimusic player idea started last June, as a joint project between e.Digital, a San Diego firm, and Lucent Technologies. Already music lovers can download music from the Internet using the MP3 compressed digital format or by recording music onto CDs.
But new technology now permits downloading music through your computer onto 'compact flash cards' only 1 1/2 inches square, to be plopped into players less than three inches across. The new chips hold 120 minutes or more of music. That's less than the capacity of a full-size CD, but still longer than the 50 or 60 minutes of music that are typically recorded onto CDs by commercial record companies. It's also more than the capacity of MP3 players, which typically play only 60 minutes of music.
ELUSIVE DESIGN
Under the partnership, e.Digital was designing the hardware and software for the new player, and Lucent was hiring a designer for the case, display screen and function buttons.
'But the design company they hired couldn't come up with a drawing that anybody liked,' Falk said. 'They had no pizazz.'
Falk had come to know Deborah Singer, a computer teacher at DASH, when she, doing research into buying e.Digital stock, posted comments on the firm's bulletin board. Falk was so impressed with her views that he contacted her.
And when Singer heard about Falk's design difficulties, she asked him to let her students take a shot at it.
'We were under the gun at that time,' Falk says, 'so I told her, 'We'll give you a week.' '
Singer and DASH administrators chose 16 students from industrial design, architecture and graphics classes -- then on summer vacation -- and called for volunteers to try designing the player.
'I gave them four days,' Singer says.
Singer, a NASA Classroom of the Future master teacher, lent a hand.
'I took them to electronics shops to try things out. We played with machines, pushed buttons, to see what worked.'
Alvarez wasn't intimidated by the challenge.
'I just took it as a fun assignment.'
Already working eight hours a day as an intern at a local engineering firm, and from 7 to 10 p.m. at a Gap clothing store, Alvarez did the design work late at night.
'I came home one night really tired; I was dead. But I had an idea for the design. It just came out of nowhere. I said, 'Why not just a circle?' '
He sat down at his desk, and, between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m., created the four drawings that e.Digital ended up choosing.
Falk was impressed.
'By the end of the week there was a packet at our door with 10 or 15 completed drawings. It was a fabulous job by all the students.'
He chose Alvarez's design. It was attractive, easy to hold and easy to use, he said.
'And it had pizazz.'
'We showed it at our shareholder meeting a couple of weeks ago, and they went crazy over it.'
'TWAS THE SHOES
Alvarez has loved to draw all his life. While he was in the studio art class at South Miami Middle School, he grew dissatisfied with his $100-plus Air Jordan sneakers and designed the perfect pair for himself -- although he never had a way of getting them made.
'I love all kinds of drawing -- still lifes, landscapes, portraits. But now I'm moving from 'art-art' to design art.
He got into electronics as a weekend, private-party DJ, even writing his own rap lyrics -- yet another way to earn money for college.
After graduation, he hopes to attend the Center for Creative Studies in Detroit, or maybe the Rhode Island School of Art and Design.
'I'm debating between transportation design or product design. I have to try them out to see which I like.'
Ultimately, he'd like to open his own firm, designing the automobiles or electronic gadgets of the future.
Right now he's concentrating on earning money for college. So it would be nice if his new minimusic player design could provide some of that money.
Says Falk: 'If we sign up a manufacturer who wants to use this design, we can look into something like that.' |
