When Gu Biao was soaking in the bathtub last night, he had already read the information on the research and development progress of the latest CD player.

However, there is still a big gap between this and the intuitiveness when I arrived at the venue and saw the phased structural samples.

At this moment, Gu Biao has several structural samples of hand molds in front of him, and they all look like failures - in the field of consumer electronics, it is not uncommon for the pre-design of the structure to be implemented in parallel before the internal motherboard design is completely completed.

Because it is completely possible to let the person who lays out the motherboard roughly mention the indicators and how much space needs to be reserved, and then the structural engineers and industrial designers can roughly start drying first. If the subsequent reserved size is not enough, then fine-tuning and modification.

The length and width of this thing in front of Gu Biao are much smaller than the benchmark Sony CDP-101, but the thickness is even better, it is thicker than a brick.

Gu Wei weighed it, and each structural prototype was finally estimated to weigh three catties.

As for his original request that "the CD cover must be made into a circular shape, so that when the user takes it to the outdoors, others can see at a glance that it is a CD player and not a tape walkman", the company's hardware engineers have done it perfectly.

However, this CD cover looks several turns larger than the size of the CD itself, which is a waste of space.

It should belong to the situation of "the boss moves his mouth, and the structure runs and breaks his legs".

"Why is the machine so thick? Also, why is this CD cover several turns larger than the CD? Isn't it enough to be a little bigger than the CD? I haven't seen you guys much smaller than Sony's desktop CDP-101, if Archimedes were to throw it in the water, it would be almost half the water that overflowed. ”

Gu Biao looked at this crying and laughing thing, and couldn't help but ask.

Orders from the top down are really easy to get freaks.

However, fortunately, the project research and development has only taken 3 months, and the finished product research and development cycle is only halfway, so it is normal to have problems.

"Boss, we can't help it - our machine, in fact, has a lot more functional modules than Sony's CDP-101, so it can be reduced to 60%~70% of the volume of Sony's desktop, which is already the limit, you underestimate the difficulty of structural design. Lu Yunda of the hardware design group vomited bitterness.

"It's more multi-functional than Sony, who asked you to add a functional module?" Gu Biao was stunned.

Lu Yunda said helplessly: "You propose to be portable, then at least we have to add the cabin of the battery pack......, right?

This requires a larger transformer, rectifier, you know, Sony CDP-101 is directly plugged in with two pins, and people can directly supply 110V power. Therefore, although the CD player technology has improved for a year and a half compared to Sony's time, and the miniaturization of other modules has also achieved some results, we are also desperate to increase the size and weight of this power supply part, and swallow back more than half of the space saved in other parts. ”

When Gu Biao heard this, he personally dismantled a hand-molded structural part and observed the overall structure.

At present, this specimen seems to be prepared to be made with 12V DC power, and the battery compartment can be plugged into eight NiMH batteries. Because the size of the battery is limited, the diameter of the whole machine cannot be too small, which leads to the wasteful size of the CD cover several times——

Originally, if it was made square, the square battery box at the bottom and the square CD box on the top could fit better, and there would be no horns protruding. But Gu Biao had to make a round CD body, so he had to enlarge the circle, which wasted space.

After reading it, Gu Biao confirmed: "So, the main problem of miniaturization at present is caused by the power supply, including the battery box?"

President Schulhoff also saw that Gu Biao was not satisfied, and hurriedly came out to play a round: "This is indeed a new problem caused by new features, and they have tried their best."

In fact, we have also discussed, or change this CD to not allow charging, not allowed to connect to the mains, can only be used by plugging in batteries, throwing away when the battery runs out, or using other devices to charge the rechargeable battery. This saves a lot of patterns and reduces the size.

The key point of this project was that we required the CD player to be placed in the living room for mains electricity, and we also wanted to allow backpackers to take it with them, which was too troublesome. Sony makes it very clear that a plug-in recorder is a plug-in recorder, and a battery walkman is a battery walkman. ”

Gu Biao pondered and nodded slightly, he also knew that what Schulhoff said was reasonable, product design must be subtracted, as concise as possible, and it is the most taboo to be greedy and chewy about functions.

However, at present, even after the cost is reduced, a CD player will cost two or three hundred dollars, if there is only one application scenario, the frequency of use will be lower, will it further suppress consumers' desire to buy?

As if seeing Gu Biao's hesitation and vacillation, Schulhoff hurriedly took the opportunity to advise: "I have recently done some intelligence work with friends, and I heard that Sony seems to be slowly discussing whether to explore a new market for CD players. I estimate that they will set up a project in the middle of the year, and the product positioning is very likely to be only a pure battery box, without considering the living room plug-in playback. ”

The product mentioned by Schulhoff is actually the first CD Walkman launched by Sony in November 84, D50 in history.

With the intelligence work that penetrates each other in the circle, it is not very difficult to find out what friends are doing, at most the specific progress of research and development, the details of the design concept, it is difficult to inquire in advance, and basically you will not know until the release of friends.

"Sony is going to launch a battery-only, non-plugged, non-rechargeable CD Walkman? Gu Biao secretly thought in his heart.

In his previous life, in the late 90s, when he was in middle school, he bought Sony's CD Walkman for use, and he knew very well what Sony's products looked like.

There must be some detours in this, which I have overlooked.

Gu Biao thought so, while comparing the ugly goods in front of him, trying his best to recall how he used CD Walkman in his previous life.

The other subordinates didn't dare to interrupt the boss's train of thought, and they could only wait stupidly to accompany the boss when they saw the boss stunned there.

Gu Biao finally caught some inspiration, and he announced:

"No, we can't scale back the functionality of the product, and it's not easy for customers to spend two or three hundred dollars on a CD player, because they definitely want a multi-functional environment that doesn't cost much for batteries." Therefore, plug-in and charging functions are indispensable.

But!We can divide the CD body and the battery box into two parts, which are connected by a data cable, oh no, I mean a DC cable!"

When he heard Gu Biao's previous decision, the person in charge of the hardware development team sank in his heart.

The boss is going to be blind again, and the layman is in charge of the insider, this company eats jujube pills.

However, after Gu Biao put forward the follow-up specific suggestions, everyone felt very imaginative.

"A battery walkman, but don't make the battery and the body integrated?

This kind of product design thinking was almost unheard of in the field of consumer electronics before.

Because everyone habitually feels that this is to increase the inconvenience of users, people only need to carry a larger box in their pockets, how convenient. Now I have to carry two smaller boxes, and they have to be connected by wires in the middle, which is not simple to look at.

However, Gu Biao has no such concerns. Because he likes to switch between multiple modes at will. And as a visitor from later generations, he is very accustomed to "dragging an additional power bank on his mobile phone and using it while charging".

Therefore, he took advantage of the victory and talked eloquently: "We can make the body itself into a 12V DC power supply, and then the pre-sale model includes a CD player body and a transformer for plugging in the living room." Position the product as a 'living room CD player'.

Then, sell an accessory kit that costs twenty or thirty dollars, including an external battery case with a charging port, cables, and headphones. After the customer buys this accessory set, he can transform the living room CD player into a Walkman.

In this way, we can also remind our customers: you spent a little more money and bought two types of features, which is too profitable!

As for the towing cable between the battery box and the body, we can also interpret it as 'this is not inconvenient to carry, but convenient for customers to switch', as long as this concept is poured out, customers will easily accept this trendy setting.

When the time comes, they drag out a wire from their backpack, connect it to their clothes pocket, pull out a headphone cable from their clothes pocket and put it on their heads, then this scene will become a scenery in the United States and even on the streets of this country, no one else needs to show the machine, just exposing these two wires, people can know that they are CD Walkman users, not low-pressure tape Walkman users.

Think about it, without exposing the machine, they can invisibly pretend to show off their wealth and show off the tide, will they still feel that this is inconvenient? As for safety, there is no problem at all, the direct working voltage of our machine is 12V, the body interface is already a safe voltage, and the towing line is no problem at all. High voltage is only available at the front end of the transformer in living room mode. ”

The more Gu Biao spoke, the more excited he became, and the tone and speed of his speech were enough to infect a large group of people.

In fact, he wants to say that the working voltage of the CD player will be directly set to 5V of the USB in the future, or even more radical to lithium battery, but think about it for the time being.

The 3.7V reference lithium battery in '84 was still too immature, and the servo motor that dragged the CD disc was not as stable and low-voltage as later generations.

12V is 12V, as long as the interface is more mature, the function switching is more convenient, and the subtraction is more, in principle, it is not a big problem.

From President Schulhoff, to Professor Erickson, the technical director, and even Lu Yunda from the hardware development team, they all felt that after such an analysis, the boss seemed to be much more feasible.

It turns out that it is not a layman who commands an insider, but a real master of product experience design.

"Strip the battery box, transformer, and charger from the main unit, which will save at least half of the space. In this way, it should be no problem to make a thin and light disc-shaped CD Walkman. It's exciting to think about it, even Sony didn't expect this, and when the time comes, our CD player will be thinner than Sony...... I'm sure I'll be able to get the sign right away. ”