IDSA Member Fred Bould and his firm are featured in a Bloomberg Businessweek article about the L16—a new, 16-lens, small, handheld camera that achieves the resolution, depth of field and focus control of a digital, single-lens reflex camera (DSLR).
The technology was created by Rajiv Laroia and a team of engineers. But according to the article, “The real achievement would be to create a standalone camera, compact enough to carry around. The team asked themselves, ‘What are other things that have done what we’re trying to do here—take something traditional that hasn’t changed in a long time and reboot it?’”
Enter Bould, whose portfolio included the da Vinci® Xi™ Surgical System, Nest Learning Thermostat (also 2nd Generation version), GoPro Hero3 and Roku 2—all of which won IDSA’s International Design Excellence Awards (IDEAs) over the years. Bould’s “10-person Silicon Valley company has become a go-to for entrepreneurs who dream of reinventing entire product categories,” writes Rob Walker, a journalist who himself knows a thing or two about design—he’s on the Product of Design faculty at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and co-authored Significant Objects.
The preordered L16s, each costing $1,600, start shipping in April 2017. They will be rolled out to specialty online sellers, mass online sellers and brick-and-mortar retail by the end of 2017. “A lot of times what happens when new technology comes along, you’re tempted to say, ‘Well, let’s do everything new,’” Bould tells Walker. “It’s important to step back and say, ‘What do we want the experience to be? ’”
Bould earned his BFA from Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Design and an MS in product design from the Stanford University School of Engineering.