A SIMple comPUTER meant to serve a broad audience ranging from computing enthusiasts to e-governance projects. This was the brief presented by PicoPeta the inventors of the Simputer to Bang*. Let it not be too flashy, yet appeal to an aficionado, let it carry a smart card and a large battery to provide power without charging for eight hours. We are a startup and cannot afford a massive NRE in tooling. We also need to keep the BoM cost low as a version will be required to take part in govt tenders.
These were some of the self conflicting requirements that came forward during our initial discussions with PicoPeta. We decided on a strategy that while the overall form of the Simputer would remain the same for all the versions, we could create core side features that would allow for creating multiple versions with addition and removal of inserts thus bringing down the NRE. A prominent design intervention that we incorporated over the original design was the removable door in PP. This not only made for an appealing design element, but also prevented the screen from getting scratched and was economical to manufacture. A unique feature to the Simputer is the clean physical interface on the front fascia which is completely free of buttons.This gave us an empty canvas to experiment with colours such as basic neutrals, rich hues and metallic wet look finishes, which could be utilized for differentiating various versions based upon price and other marketing criteria.