A little known fact about the BlackBerry PlayBook is that the company that led the User Experience design is an Ottawa firm called Teknision. The company worked closely with RIM’s executive team and provided creative direction, conceptualization and lead design execution for the Tablet OS.
While we all know that the QNX operating system will come to smartphones, what isn’t clear is how it will actually look on the device. From Teknision’s site, they drop the hint that the UX will be similar. The company writes: “The BlackBerry Tablet OS is a completely new user experience direction for BlackBerry, which will eventually extend to all RIM devices.” From the small handling we’ve done of the PlayBook, the UX has been great and it will be interesting to see how it works on a small screen. Touchscreen and QWERTY hybrids are probably going to play a role in all this.
Another part of Teknision’s role in the PlayBook development was the creation of the design and development of some of the applications to be installed on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet at launch. According to the site, “Teknision played a pivotal role in the creation of the PlayBook SDK and created prototypes of the PlayBook Photo and Music applications.”
RIM should do a better job of letting the world know about some of the smaller companies involved in the PlayBook. We hear a lot about The Astonishing Tribe and QNX, but Teknision hasn’t been mentioned once in a RIM press release as far as we can tell. Teknision is a very cool company and we’re looking forward to hearing more about their role in helping make compelling BlackBerry devices.
