Tungsten W point-of-sale animation

The Tungsten W was Palm's first attempt to develop a full-powered, secure smartphone.  For the first time, Palm's top-line smartphone marketing was directed towards enterprise rather than retail.  However, at the time most corporate buyers were purchasing their smartphones at retail and then being reimbursed by their companies.  The big design challenge was developing a captivating something that could get someone's attention and memorably present the product's key advantages.  We considered POS placards, tear-sheets, and customer-facing QuickTrains, but settled on an on-device animation. Technically I was challenged by the limited 160x160 screen resolution, memory requirements, and screen refresh speeds constrained by how Palm OS wrote data to the screen.

I used a cinematic approach to development. First I wrote three one-page text treatments that characterized the animation; then a script; then a storyboard. Each phase was approved by marketing and sales.  The final storyboard was also approved by Palm Legal.

With those approvals in place, I taught myself the basics of Flash animation and coded the animation. The final SWF file was then converted into a Palm PRC application file by an outside systems integration firm. This firm also coded an auto-loading SD card to place the Palm PRC application file onto live devices in retail stores throughout the USA.

Here's the text treatment that was chosen:

From this text treatment, I developed a full script: Seize the Day Script.pdf 

And then a storyboard: Pacific Storybd v17 Wide.pdf

And here’s the final (soundless) animation: