Our press gal, Tiffany, talks up Quirky with a journalist at CES.

Today’s the day! Ben and the Quirky sales team have headed west to unveil Perch, Maria Morill’s winning speaker idea, at the larger-than-life Consumer Electronics Show in sunny (well, sunnier) Las Vegas.

Perch will be shown to the world at Pepcom’s Digital Experience!, the country’s largest and best-attended consumer electronics media event. Imagine the exposure! We can’t wait.

We’re also excited about the direction we’ve taken for this product, but we realize that the final outcome strays a bit from the sketches presented in the Refine phase. So out of fairness, we’ve decided to redistribute the influence for this phase among all the people who voted, effective later today. Just wanted to give you the heads up in case your influence totals look funky.

Oh yeah, and to follow the madness, check out hashtag #CES on Twitter for all the latest and greatest from the event. And follow @QuirkyInc… we’re pretty cool too.

Upon posting the original CMF options, we read through the comments and found that they were very in favor of a neutral color palette. The reasoning was clear: we needed a product that worked in any context. For this reason we picked the Black/Grey “Business Time” option.

One thing we couldn’t help but notice in the comments was that, even though it worked in many scenarios, black and grey was just too boring. It seemed like a lot of the votes were there because either it was the “lowest common denominator” option, or it was the most common speaker color to choose from. While there was significant support for the color options, a lot of the comments showed that people only voted for them because it was their personal favorite, but they were worried about it performing well with mass consumers. We agreed. For these reasons we took the “Business Time” option further, and explored the range of the neutral palette.

The color scheme we’re moving forward with will be anodized black metal on the outside, with white gloss on the inside, and black silicone borders and buttons. The base will also feature the same materials: black anodized metal on the bottom, white high gloss on the tray, and black silicone details.

We were so drawn to the white because of the way it amplifies the curvature of the inside, and while on the stand it ties to the two together well. We also felt that the contrast is loud enough to help us stand out in the sea of products at CES. And as a product that is supposed to be forward thinking, we thought the white gloss referenced a futuristic feel that the mass market could relate to (Star Wars stormtroopers, the elusive white iPhone, EVE from Wall-E). The black anodized metal speaks to it being a tech and music product, and as it wraps around the speaker or base, it pulls your attention with it.

We’ve now sent this material spec out to our model maker and are on track to have the Quirky speaker, soon to be named by you, debut at CES.

•power

•sound

•phone

It will incorporate a charging base for a wireless speaker module, and will also facilitate charging your phone, all in one discreet unit. One huge discussion point has been whether we should continue to tie ourselves to having the entire product mounted at the outlet, or whether it should be a charging base that the consumer can place somewhere more convenient and accessible. We have decided the latter is a stronger direction.

We have listened to your concerns about sound quality and are going to do everything possible to make sure this is a high quality unit worthy of the Quirky brand. So far it is looking like it will become a wonderfully iconic piece of consumer electronics… stay tuned!

No time to catch our breath, though, as we plunge headlong into a pretty tight schedule to get this product ready for unveiling on… the 5th of January. That’s less than three weeks away. Whoa.

Here’s rough projected timeline for this project. Let’s get ready to rock!

Fri 17
• Launch ‘Questionnaire’
• Launch ‘Concept Phase’: Community, you have the weekend to get this started right!

Mon 20
• QDS sketch throwdown for ‘Refine Phase’ (riffin’ on community Concept Phase submissions)
• Launch ‘Refine Phase’, community votes on submissions

Tues 21
• Pick ‘Refine Phase’ winner
• 2D/Prototyping

Wed 22
• Finalize 2D/Prototyping
• Start 3D

Fri 24
• Finalize 3D
• Launch ‘Color, Material, Finish’ Phase

Mon 27
• Print parts on Bertha, FedEx to modelmaker
• Start generating image assets/copy
• Pick ‘Color, Material, Finish’ Phase winner, send final spec to modelmaker

Tues 4
• Model Fedexed to CES for Wed 5th delivery (day before show starts)

Easy, right?

This week, we’re kicking off the development of a brand new consumer electronics product, just in time for CES 2011. We’re throwing our “under-$150-no-integrated-software” rule out the window for this one.

Let’s come together and invent something amazing to unveil at CES 2011.

We will be launching this week’s winner at the world’s best-attended consumer electronics media event, held during the annual International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. This means that the winning product will instantly enter the radar of media representatives from around the world! (The excitement is killing us too.)

The sky’s the limit here, so let’s create something truly technologically awesome. Robots, anyone?

Submit your idea here.

CES: Quirky’s Beamer Shines A Light On iPhone Videos from Hand Held Hollywood on Vimeo.