Pantech Goes Back to the Drawing Board

(page 2 of 2)

"In the future, cell phones won't be used for one-on-one communication. Users will be organized in groups, using [phones] for networking, forums, blogs, wikis, etc. I wanted to focus on these new technologies to discover new ways of interacting.

"My advice to the students was that they should look beyond existing cell phones to focus on their own desires, their own interactions and their own knowledge of how they relate to friends," he continues. "I advised them to think about subjects they are already genuinely interested in, and think about how to integrate those into their designs."

The resulting products represent a diverse series of concepts and interests, from the practical (GPS-enabled handsets that give directions or connect the user to information about a particular location) to the bizarre (a "calorie-sniffing" phone that uses NASA software to provide dietary analysis, advice, and information to the handset owner). Four CCA students were chosen to present the designs to Pantech management in Seoul. "Of course, the student-led projects did not produce an outcome that reached a professional level of refinement, but we found it very successful from the perspective of securing diversity and creativity," says Yi.

For Pantech, however, a professional level of refinement and the ability of design to live within the real world is exactly what is required right now. Yi says that a Pantech task force will review and refine some of the CCA students' ideas using the data to develop cell phones to be marketed in the U.S., a sign that it sees design as part of its turnaround. But for the students themselves, the insight into a company in trouble may just have provided the most useful lesson of all.

Click here to see a slide show of some of the ideas generated from Pantech's collaboration with design students.

With Moon Ihlwan in Seoul

Helen Walters is the editor for BusinessWeek.com's Innovation and Design Channel.