Project Overview

Glowdeck is the ultimate companion for your smartphone, wrapping a wireless charger, Bluetooth speaker, LED light system, and wifi-enabled notifications platform into a sleek wooden box that looks great on any surface in your home.

Organisation

Power Light & Sound Company, Inc.

  

Team

Arielle Assouline-Lichten | UI/UX Design Lead
Ben Brady | Product Design Lead
Erik Kettenburg | Hardware Lead
Alex Sandman | Media Lead

Project Brief

Until now, charging has been about one thing: making that little battery meter fill up. When you charge with Glowdeck, your phone acts like a key, transforming Glowdeck into a personal notifications platform.

Glowdeck aims to be a simple device that helps reduce the complexity in people's lives. The exterior casing minimizes superfluous elements by reducing the interface to a color LCD, coupled with two high quality speakers. The simplicity of the floating box allows for light to shine down and reflect off your table top surface, creating a calming glow to notify you of any new alerts. The rear of the case has the power button, the power jack, and a USB port for connected charging, should you wish to use it.

Project Innovation/Need

Glowdeck's light notification system is the first of its kind. By associating light colors and patterns with the different types of notifications we get on our phones and computers throughout the day, Glowdeck offers a new, silent way to be alerted to the stuff that matters to you, without also notifying the people around you.

Design Challenge

The biggest challenge to creating Glowdeck was, undoubtedly, the fact that I had never created or designed a physical product, nor had I received any formal training in product design prior to starting this project. Add to that the fact that I gave myself one year to pull it off, and it was quickly apparent that the learning curve would be the most formidable challenge to realizing my goal.

Sustainability

With regard to sustainability, Glowdeck's greatest potential impact is in its capacity to reduce the carbon foot print created by the vast number of smartphone charging cables produced every year (many of which become obselete with the release of new smartphone models). Wireless charging cuts out the need for these cables, and in a way that adds new value to the overall smartphone product experience.