JOHN LEDINGHAM

After graduating from design school, I worked for several design consultancies in and around Chicago. I followed my consultancy experience with a tenure at Motorola Mobility and Whirlpool/KitchenAid, before joining Poly (Plantronics + Polycom). Each of these roles offered diverse experiences, and allowed me to hone my skills as a hardware and UX designer. Below, you'll find a cross-section of my early work, spanning the years before I joined Whirlpool/KitchenAid.

As a Sr. Designer for Motorola Mobility, I worked primarily on Messaging products. This was the pre-smartphone era. The Razr was in development, and small text messaging products were all the rage. Blackberry was the leader in SMS communication and Motorola and Nokia were battling for dominance in the mobile phone market. My official title was "Sr. Designer, European Liaison V. Brand". Motorola's "V." sub-brand, focused on the youth market. The V. design team was based in Northern Italy. I spent much of my time in and around Milan, working with the European designers to create "vision products" to define and illustrate new opportunities for Motorola. I also worked on the occasional mobile phone program.

Motorola V100 Messenger

The V100 was the equivalent of a "feature phone" for teens and 'tweens. It combined a mobile phone, email/messaging, gaming and music in one device. The full QWERTY keyboard made texting much easier than its phone contemporaries.

Motorola iDEN i700

The i700 was the second generation of Nextel's push-to-talk phones. As the lead designer on the program, my goal was to create a product that would be tough enough to stand up to the rigors of construction work, while also being desirable to the "active lifestyle enthusiast" (i.e. campers, hikers, mountain bikers, etc.). It was a runaway hit, remaining in production much longer than most of its contemporaries.

A cross-section of the programs on which I worked during my tenure with Motorola Mobility. Most of this work was created for Motorola’s “V.” sub-brand, intended for the youth market. Many of the programs at Motorola were collaborations with key customers like Timex, MTV, and a number of mobile phone carriers.