Sony reaches for the crowd with e-paper universal remote
The Huis controller, as the designers call it for “Home User Interfaces”, has to raise ¥5 million ($41,000) in the 50 day campaign if it is to make it to the market, else the engineers will call it quit until a new design intent comes up to seduce the broad consumer market.
Sony clearly sees the benefits that crowd-sourcing brings, in terms of potential user-feedback and customer interactivity, with the immediate response and agility that targeted newsletters can leverage.
So much so that the company has set up its own crowd sourcing platform (last year it had relied on Japanese site Makuake) to have full control of things and bring its other projects to the attention of would-be backers.
The platform is only available in Japanese and limited to Sony’s in-house projects, developing them into three stages, a teaser stage, in which new ideas can be previewed and discussed, followed by crowdfunding and e-commerce.
"One of the strengths and aims of First Flight is to facilitate ongoing dialogue with customers from initial development through to market introduction, by seamlessly connecting each phase from previewing and crowd funding to e-commerce," a Sony spokeswoman reportedly told the Wall Street Journal.
As the promotional video shows, the e-paper remote could display whole sets of menus each catering for various consumer electronic goods across the home, in effect, centralizing home automation in a configurable way that would also let users create their own custom display buttons and layouts.
Communication with other home appliances is done through Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, but a smart cradle could bring in more options, the engineers explain.
Only hours after the campaign kickoff, this universal remote has raised over 50% of its original goal, from Japanese backers alone, since the site will only ship to Japanese addresses.
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