One year ago Jakajima and DECT Forum organized the CAT-iq global design competition amongst the design students around the globe. 

Here are some ideas. CAT-iq offers much more than just a phone!

For more information go the site of the CAT-iq design competition.

Doro is an industrial partner in a European Union funded research project working to create an avatar, an advanced Virtual User Model, for the development of adapted and easy-to-use products for people with special needs.
In the project, named VICON, Doro is cooperating with well-reputed scientific institutions as University of Bremen, Fraunhofer FIT, RNID and CNIB, among
others.

The EU initiated the project with the aim of preventing the marginalization of people with impaired vision, hearing and mobility. The project will initially focus on two product categories that are important for people in their daily lives, washing machines and mobile phones. The primary target group is the growing number of seniors.

Doro will participate in the definition, validation, dissemination and the potential commercialization of the project's results. Ultimately, the EU hopes that the project will also enhance the competitiveness of European technology companies.

Facts about the project VICON:
Virtual User Concept for Inclusive Design of Consumer Products and User Interfaces (VICON) is a project in the EU's seventh framework program, also known as FP7. This is the EU's main instrument for funding frontier research in Europe and it is valid from 2007 to 2013. More information on this site.

For the thirteenth time the DECT Forum held the international CAT-iq / DECT Conference. Amsterdam was, for the second time, the city where the conference took place.

This video gives a good overview of the conference.

It also shows the winners of the CAT-iq design competition;

• first price, Conrad Croencke
• second price, Werner Helmich
• runner up price, Joris Zaalberg

For more information about the design competition, go to the site.

Berne, Switzerland, December 3, 2008. The DECT Forum, the worldwide association of the home communication industry, and Jakajima are pleased to announce the winners of the International CAT-iq Student Design Competition.

With the CAT-iq Design Competition 2008 the DECT Forum inspired design students from all over the world to create out of the box products and exciting services for the next generation of home communication. The jury of international experts has made the decision for the first three prizes. Winners will be invited to the DECT CAT-iq Conference 2009 in Amsterdam; the awarded design studies will be presented during the conference (February 3-4, 2008) to industry experts.

Erich Kamperschroer, Chairman of the DECT Forum, is pleased to disclose the three winners of the CAT-iq Design Competition 2008:

The quality of the submitted designs was high but very diverse. The winning concepts were distinctive and well presented. The final decision on the runner up prize was not so easy as there were several ideas that made the choice difficult.

Comment of the jury for First prize:
Innovation level was very high and a good approach to embed CAT-iq in home entertainment equipment. The idea has a distinctive design language and very good graphic presentation and is a completely thought through concept.

Comment of the jury for Second prize:
High level of innovation and a great design. Interesting new attempt for sound/voice communication. 

Comment of the jury for Runner up prize:
Using special awareness to move in and out of conversational areas is very innovative and offers new ways of communication amongst people.

About DECT Forum and Jakajima:
The DECT Forum is the international industry association of the home communication industry. With more than 670 million devices sold and growing to more than 100 million devices per year, DECT, DECT 6.0 and CAT-iq are worldwide-adopted technologies with high relevance for cordless voice and broadband home communication. The DECT Forum is located in Berne, Switzerland. Full members of the DECT Forum are currently: American Telecom, Ascom, Avaya, AVM, Binatone, CCT, DSP Group, Gigaset Communications, GN Netcom, Infineon, Kirk, Panasonic, Philips, Plantronics, RTX, Sagem, SiTel, SGW Electronics, Telematrix, Thomson, Topcom, Unical, Uniden, VTech. For more information please visit us at: www.dect.org  www.cat-iq.org www.catiqdesigncompetition.org

Jakajima is an independent market intelligence and innovation company for the telecom, ICT, and consumer-electronics trade chain. Jakajima is based in Nuenen, Netherlands. Please read more at www.jakajima.eu.

Registration for Participants Closes on September 19, 2008

Berne, Switzerland, September 9, 2008. The DECT Forum, the worldwide association of the home communication industry, announces the closing of the registration for the CAT-iq Design Competition on September 19, 2008. Design students from all over the world can win cash-prizes as well as market or licence their great ideas to leading companies of the home communication industry.

“The communication business changes dramatically. We call it overall IP communication. With your participation in the CAT-iq Design Competition you have the opportunity to shape the future of home communication. With some luck you can win attractive cash-prizes. But even more, since the
leading global industry players follow this competition very closely, the best ideas have a great chance to be manufactured and seen soon as innovative products on the market, in stores all
over the world”, says Erich Kamperschroer, Chairman of the DECT Forum.

The CAT-iq Design Competition addresses two general categories:
• Leading-edge Products for broadband home communication
      and/or
• Innovative and useful Services for broadband home communication

CAT-iq Student Design Competition Prizes:
First prize: 10,000 €
Second prize: 5,000 €
Third runner-up prize: 1,000 €

CAT-iq Student Design Competition Checklist:
Close of registration: September 19, 2008.
Submission of entries: October 10, 2008.
Announcement of winners: November 14, 2008.
More information, registration, contacts at: www.catiqdesigncompetition.org

About CAT-iq:

CAT-iq, the global technology platform for wireless communication, is the successor of the reliable DECT standard. CAT-iq is designed for the next generation of IP networks, operates in a protected frequency band and is available in almost every region of the world. The most important benefits of the CAT-iq technology are:
full in-house IP connectivity, applicable for CD quality audio and radio, widescreen messaging, intelligent device management and remote control, real plug and play, and energy saving.

About DECT Forum and Jakajima:

The DECT Forum and Jakajima arrange the Design Competition. The DECT Forum, located in Berne, Switzerland, is the international industry association representing the worldwide home communication industry. Jury members of the Design competition are: Vincent Buet (Philips), Pieter Hermans (Jakajima), Erich Kamperschroer (DECT Forum), Nicholas Rhodes (St. Martins College London), Erik Stridbaek (Polycom),
Sofia Svanteson (Ocean Observations), Lesley Taylor (SGW Europe), C.H. Tong (VTech).
For more information please visit: www.dect.org www.cat-iq.org www.catiqdesigncompetition.org

Jakajima is an independent market intelligence and innovation company for the telecom, ICT, and consumer-electronics trade chain. Jakajima is based in Nuenen, Netherlands. Please read more at www.jakajima.eu.

Some weeks ago we started to help in the creation of new CAT-iq product concepts and ideas. This as support for the international CAT-iq design competition for students, organized by DECT Forum and Jakajima.

Together with redesignme, we set up a CAT-iq page, end of July. So far 20 ideas came up. Not all of them are great, but some are interesting concepts, and not just telephony related!

Go to the CAT-iq page at the Redesignme site, and decide for yourself.

The CAT-iq Student Design Competition solicits innovative approaches for new and leading-edge products and services in the area of home communication. “Students in the field of industrial design, interactive design, gaming design, and electronic engineering, are unique in their ability to impact the quality of people's future in-house communication and cordless telephony”, says Erich Kamperschroer. “Hence, we ask students to face many fascinating challenges in designing usable and enjoyable services, applications, and devices for the consumers.

I found on the internet this short article in a blog about designing for humans.

For those working in productdevelopment en producdesign this could be interesting, specially when we talk about new CAT-iq product concepts. Those who are involved in the CAT-iq design competition might find this article and the blog useful.

The article starts promising;

I've got a bias against design standards based on my experiences working with organizations that have tried to set them before, rather than after designing a product.  Standards should be a way to document a proven approach, not a prescription for how to do something that hasn't been done yet.  On the other hand, process standards are useful a priori because they provide guidance on how to do something that you may have not done before.  And like design standards, process standards should be updated over time with experience.

Read the full article

When you are googling for CAT-iq, you will find an increasing number of results related to the standard, but also to the iq of cats.

One designer has combined the two and came up with a productconcept, combining both. See his idea.

At this this from the company Redesignme.com you will find some other ideas as well.

All these ideas can be input for the CAT-iq design competition.

I bumped into this product concept, and I thought this is an interesting idea for CAT-iq

This is an major Project of Robert Curtis;

'incus' is the name of my recently completed major project; a personal listener and home alert for the hard of hearing. The project has been undertaken in collaboration with the Royal National Institute for the Deaf and seeks to the address the problem of social isolation caused by personal listening products, whereby users are cut off from audible events such as the telephone ringing.

You can argue whether the design is great (sorry Robert), but the idea is interesting.

The market for the deaf is small, I assume, but if you have a product like this and combine it with Internet and some more intelligence, it opens the opportunity for new services.

For the whole story and video go to the site