Quo-industry

E‑paper post-it concept — prospective study (horizon 2015)

We ima­gined for the Japanese SME QUO-Industry what could be the Post-it tomor­row. The world is more and more con­cerned about the use of resources and sus­tain­able devel­op­ment. So, we worked on a simple to use and very intu­it­ive Post-it, with the use of a pro­spect­ive tech­no­logy that would make it reusable: the flex­ible col­or touch screen.

E‑note concept has been designed to help people to real­ize that even a small post-it could be used and reused many times, and sav­ing resources. But, also, to facil­it­ate the life of everyone.

E‑note is using the tact­ile and flex­ible elec­tron­ic paper tech­no­logy, and is powered by a sol­ar captor. E‑notes can be stuck, and unstuck, eas­ily and dur­ably, with spe­cial “Gecko” glue, inspired by nature and the liz­ard of the same name.
E‑note is com­ing with a visu­al alarm func­tion, 8 pos­sible col­ors of mes­sage dis­play and can be used many times.

Some e‑notes writ­ten by the Nickel-Chrome design team.

Backstage of the project

Design research

We worked on the scen­ario of use of e‑note so it can offer the simplest usage pos­sible. E‑notes needed to work intu­it­ively, hence the use of hand­writ­ing recog­ni­tion. Writing Call David at 8:30 pm is enough for e‑note to ask you con­firm­a­tion to remind you to call David at 8:30 pm today. If you add a date to the mes­sage, e‑note will sug­gest you change the alert for the giv­en day and time. The dif­fer­ent col­ors of e‑notes also had to be easy to choose from for the color-blind people.

The col­or choice wheel there­fore indic­ates in text (in the cen­ter of the wheel), the name of the selec­ted col­or, if the stylus stays on it. When you release the stylus, the e‑note changes its back­ground and text col­or to match your col­or choice.

The e‑note pack­aging has been designed to be com­posed of a max­im­um of recycled ele­ments. The base of the e‑note allows to pro­tect the e‑notes in the card­board pack­aging. It is use­ful also to receive the stylus, and to help e‑notes which lost their date and time set­tings (because of lack of sol­ar power, if they stayed in a draw­er for a long time, for example), to recov­er the right set­tings from oth­er e‑notes in the notepad.