A more discreet and lady-like way of communicating
Is this peak cis? From the Telegraph:
A new startup is reinventing smartphone design, turning phones from rectangles to circles. The circular smartphone, called Cyrcle, is aimed at women, whose smaller pockets often can’t accommodate large phablets.
Ah yes, women and their biological smaller pockets.
The company behind the phone is called Dtoor – which stands for “Designing the opposite of rectangle” although the Cyrcle smartphone is currently their only proposed product. The founders Christina Cyr and Linda Inagawa are ex-Microsoft employees…
So everything right-angled will be designed into circularity to accommodate poor woolly women who can’t handle corners? Books will be round, magazines will be round, doors will be round, paper currency will be round?
The makers seem to be serious about launching this specialist “feminine-forward” phone, despite its completely tone-deaf promotional material. For instance, they claim to be custom-building for women, because current phones make women look “unattractive”, describing it as, “moms at a volleyball practice pecking like chickens into their mobile phones.” The Cyrcle is pegged as a more discreet and lady-like way of communicating.
Since the designers are women, I would pretty much call that cis – taking the stereotypes at face value and treating them as charming bits of personality as opposed to confining belittling limiting stereotypes.
Anyway, I struggle more with circles than I do with rectangles. When I go to pick up something circular I just can’t seem to figure out where the edge is.
That is hilarious. It sounds like satire.
Where are we supposed to carry these things?
I have no circular pockets in any purse or backpack or trousers or jackets…
Make them octagonal, for the benefit of Battlestar Galactica fans!
I find myself occasionally picking up my smartphone without paying much attention, then trying absently to turn it on by pressing the earpiece grille because it’s upside down. How much more annoying will it be to try to locate the top of a circular one, even with your full attention?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/lets-call-circular-phones-for-women-what-they-are—patronising/
How about redesigning women’s clothing to have pockets one can fit phones in?
Stupid, stupid idea; the round phones will cause no end of confusion. Women everywhere will be trying to take calls on their blusher compacts, their mirror compacts, on any number of flat, circular objects carried in their Tardis-like handbags.
On a slightly more serious note, the OP mentions the problem of putting rectangular objects into little lady-pockets, but I seem to recall from my dim and distant schooldays that a circle of equal area to a rectangle – which I assume would be necessary to fit equal technology into the lady-phone* – would actually be wider than the rectangle, knocking their logic into a cocked hat.
Having said that, I do so hope they make it in pink!
*Unless they’re dumping a lot of the technology because, you know, lady-braynz can only cope with talking and texting, the rest is just stuff for the clever menz.
All of the above is sarcasm. Except for the bit about equal areas means wider circles.
Dtoor is indeed tone-deaf, but there remains the possibility that women–as a group–actually would prefer round phones.
I’m always laying things out (furniture, landscaping) in straight lines and right angles, and my wife is always saying no no on, curves look nicer.
Many moons ago, I attended a Harvard Business School spring review: a stage show put on by the students; song and dance numbers, skits, etc. The content clearly reflected the concerns of the students at the school. One skit showed a marketing department bemoaning the lack of new market opportunities. Then a marketer rushes in, waving a clipboard, and announces that he has sliced and diced the data 27 different ways, and run spread sheets, and regressions, and discovered that–some absurd demographic–short left-handed albinos of Latin descent–prefer purple pills. The other marketers are excited at the prospect of selling to this underserved market niche. But one stands and asks, I this what we’ve been reduced to? Making purple pills? Whereupon the other marketers all shout, Who are you to deny short left-handed Latin albinos pills in the color that they want?
My guess is that the Cyrcle will fail for many reasons–not least, poor usability–and take Dtoor down with it. But who are we to say people can’t have round phones if they want them? That’s one of the things that the free market actually delivers on: consumer choice.
Stephen, nobody’s suggesting that they shouldn’t be made, we’re laughing at the bullshit’thinking’behind them.
Ask yourself in what way would a circular phone be more ladylike?, or more discrete?, or would stop women looking like pecking hens?
Round phone? No problem. Bullshit blurb? Laughable at best.
I could only think of this:
http://www.comparestoreprices.co.uk/images/go/gosh-cosmetics-creamy-compact-make-up-9g-beige.jpg
They’d do the world a better service by bringing back Polly Pocket (specifically all the amazing compact playsets) than making a pointlessly shaped phone.
Stephan – liking curves in decorating = wanting round phone? Citation needed.
And one anecdote does not data make. My ex wanted everything all curvy in decorating; I preferred right angles. He worked much shorter hours than I did, so he moved everything into curves while I was at work. Who am I to argue with someone willing to do all that work?
Moral of my story? Market the circular phone to iknklast ‘S ex. Don’t say it is for women. If someone wants a circular phone, fine. The big problem is the assumption being made that this one here (rectangular) is for people. Women need a different one.
Steven, dude. The women are talking. Go ‘way. Make us sammiches, why don’t you?
Rectangular sandwiches.
Shapes aren’t actually a sex thing.
I’d kinda like to try a round phone. Or maybe better oval. Can think of all sorts of odd ergonomic and engineering problems much crop up, but, y’know, prototype anything once.
Amusing thought I had: possibly the absence of corners would make it a bit less vulnerable to impact damage when falling… But then again, it might also… erm… roll?
Phone shape peaked with the Nokia brick, FACT.
Ah! My Nokia. I miss that.
AJ Milne, my thoughts exactly. Even stronger: somehow, I have an impression that a round phone would feel appropriate to me. (If it only weren’t … er … so ugly as this one!) It’s hard to explain this. Ah, but why should I explain? Who am I, after all? Just a guy!
[Scurries away to prepare sammiches for the ladies]