Months before the Palm Pre was announced, I had lunch with representatives from Palm. They were excited, but it wasn’t the Muscovy Duck Sausage or the excellent fall NY weather that had them in a great mood. They were just a mere few months away from announcing webOS and the Palm Pre. Clearly they knew they had something great in the making. Despite asking, they wouldn’t share much about their plans. They did stress the importance of taking a fresh approach and not overlooking what might appear to be a minor detail. Palm has built the webOS from the ground up with that very same approach. At the Palm event at CES, Palm’s VP for Industrial Design echoed these very same thoughts when discussing the thinking behind the Pre hardware.
It’s clear the company is continuing on that path, focusing on even the smallest design elements that when you add up, can make a big difference to the end user. If you compare an old press shot of the Pre to the one on their site today, Palm has redesigned the set of icons seen on the Pre homescreen. The most noticable being the phone and calendar icons. Subtle changes, but it shows how the company is committed to every detail, even the small ones. I’m not much for Muscovy Duck Sausage, but when it comes to thoughtful design, consider me excited.
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