Gadi Amit likes to create loveable objects. "We want people to cherish our products for years, because they are delightful, but also part of a new lifestyle," says Amit. His San Francisco-based studio, New Deal Design, creates personal digital objects such as the Fitbit -- one of the first mass-market consumer tracking devices, a precursor to the wearables industry. Next up: Project Ara -- Google's concept modular smartphone, which has been opened up to developers and has a 2015 target release. "You can swap your phone's hardware components -- pick your own camera, put in a high-performing processing unit or a larger battery," says Amit, whose studio is the lead designer of the project. "It's re-imagining your mobile device."
Amit comes from a family of Israeli architects, but never felt connected to buildings. "They were too cerebral. I wanted things I could hold in my hand and be tactile with," he says. Being obsessed with electronics and cars, he decided to be an industrial designer. "In 1985 I saw my first Apple Macintosh and it looked almost human to me, I fell in love with it," he says. "I loved how digital electronics could be a constant companion to humans, so that's what I've been doing for the last 30 years."
Besides the Fitbit, Amit also designed the Lytro -- a camera created in a Stanford laboratory, which allows you to adjust the focus of a picture after it has been taken. "I saw a poster detailing the most influential cameras of the last 150 years -- the last two were the iPhone camera and the Lytro, which are both completely different from regular cameras," Amit says. "It's a powerful testament to the power of design." He is now working on more sophisticated wearables that can detect biological functions, such as cardiovascular health data, biorhythms metabolism and brain activity. "Our studio takes unknown technologies and builds new markets for them," Amit says. "The people here are beyond designers who create the look of an object -- they are architects of a digital lifestyle."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
