Think Public Safety

Smart Design, Tough Testing Author: David Parry

Created Jul 17 2015, 5:00 AM by Paul Jeffs

At Motorola Solutions we aim to constantly innovate. This isn't just out of pride, it's because we believe in designing for our end-users. This belief stretches back right to the early days when we produced the first police cruiser radios in the 1930s and the 'walkie-talkie' radios for military use in the 1940s. And take a look at recent Think Public Safety blog subjects 'Just What the Customer ordered' and 'Purpose-Built LTE'. As a result of this work we are regularly put forward and win awards for smart design. A great example is this year's two new iF design awards for the LEX L10 Mission-Critical LTE Handheld and the SL300 (SL1600) MOTOTRBO™ radio.

For 61 years, the iF product design award has been an internationally recognised label for award-winning design and the iF brand has become a symbol for outstanding achievements in design. How are the winners judged? A jury carefully scrutinises each entry in order to reach an independent verdict. The jury members – leading international design experts – change on a regular basis.

The LEX L10 and SL300(SL1600) are both on show in this year's iF Design Award 2015 online exhibition.

These recent awards join a long list of other awards won since 1997 showing smart innovation in radio and public safety.

But is smart design enough? We certainly don't stop there. It's all about design with a view to exceeding customer expectations, and delivering the right information at the right time.

I thought that I'd share a recent CNBC clip that brings this to life. The video features Carlos Camps. Carlos destroys technology for a living, or at least he tries. As Director of Electrical Engineering at Motorola Solutions, he develops and tests communications for first responders. CNBC give us a front row seat in this video:

I was really taken by a statement that Carlos made "A lot of times you might be able to find us on a ride along with a police officer, you might find us on fire training learning how to put out a fire, or you might even find us running an obstacle course with a SWAT team, It's all about understanding how our products are used and then coming back to the lab so that we can develop those.."

So, now you know not only more about why we design the way we do, you know what would happen if a fire truck ran over one of our public safety radios...