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**Out With The Old In With The New: My Digitally Designed Timeline ** A small silver Samsung phone half the size of my hand by Cingular was my first phone. I was twelve years old when I got it but as you probably know Cingular doesn’t even exist anymore. I remember when my mom and I first got the offer to get the cell phones, it was buy one get one free. When the phone came in I was so excited that I couldn’t stop smiling. I finally didn’t have to use my mom or dad’s phone. Back then that was the best phone ever to me. But now looking back that was the ugliest little phone and it was so simple. Since then I’ve upgraded to 5 different phones. I’ve always liked to keep up with the technology. If there was a new phone I had to have it. Now I currently have the HTC Evo 4G. Phones have evolved in more ways than I can count. And the end has yet to come. I went from that little silver phone to a little blue flip phone. That was my first camera phone. Looking back the camera was okay and I used to take a lot of pictures on it but compared to eight mega pixels it’s nothing. Then from old blue I went to a really pink phone. A Katana was what it was called. I think this phone had the biggest affect on me when it came to a phones exterior design. It was the color that got me; I mean what girl wouldn’t like a pink phone? Now if I wanted my phone to have color I would just go buy a colored otter box. Well, on to the next in my digitally designed timeline. Next to come was this really cool slider phone. You slide the face of the phone up and it had a QWERTY keyboard. It took a while for me to get used to but I loved that phone just as I had love my other forty phones. Just kidding, but I think everyone gets tired of their phones at some point and want something different until they’re tired of that one too. This phone is infamously remembered for its pink and black zebra case in which I was obsessed with for the moment. Without the case the phone was just “blah”. It had no flavor, no individuality and at that time everyone had that phone so I wanted mine to stand out. Then one day I was just over that phone. I spotted a LG Rumor Touch that I liked. This is when touch screen phones other than iPhones first became cool. What was so cool about this phone was it had a keyboard and it had a touch screen all in one. If you slid the phone up you’d find the keyboard and the face of the phone was the touch screen. I honestly thought I was done after this phone I thought I would be satisfied and now as I sit here and type this paper I realize I have had more than the five phones I mentioned before. That’s outrageous once I think about all of the money that was spent. The crazy things I did to keep up with the new trends and designs. I don’t think that I’ve ever kept a phone for a full year; in fact the next phone I purchased was only kept for three months. It was my first my smart phone and I was really going to keep this phone but when I moved to Conway for school the service was horrible. And as I mentioned before I can’t live without my phone so that was not going to work. It was the first phone that I had that had apps and all the works. So seeing as how I was never going to have service here my sister in law added me to her sprint account and she without me knowing got me a blackberry. I was so devastated, I felt as though I had just done a major downgrade in my timeline. Thankfully I only had that phone for five days (don’t judge me) before I purchased my HTC Evo 4G which now resides here with me and I love it. No more phone swapping for me. At least not for a while because we all know that I am I struggling college student and that I am broke. So what was it about all of these phones that kept me wanting more? Well it could have been that I was just trying to keep up with the latest trends because no one wants to be left behind while everyone else is technology advancing. It could have been the physical appearance of them. Now in today’s time it seems to be more about software design. Is it user- friendly? What kind of capabilities does it have? These are questions that most buyers including myself ask when purchasing a new device. Software design has also evolved over time and has different concepts that can help enlighten the software designer with stability from which more advanced methods can be applied. After doing some research I found out that design consist of many concepts. A few that stand out to me are abstraction, refinement, and data structure. Abstraction is the process or result of generalization by reducing the information content of a concept. Refinement is the process of elaboration. Data structure is the relationship among individual elements of data. Along with these concepts are many things to consider like compatibility, reliability, security, and usability. As stated by Paola Antonelli in Daniel Pink’s “A Whole New Mind”, “Good Design is a renaissance attitude that combines technology, cognitive science, human need, and beauty to produce something the world didn’t know it was missing.” Design captures many aspects in today’s time. It has influenced me and my decisions when it comes to purchasing items like my laptop, my phone, the décor for my room, my clothes and many other things. Everyone wants to have the latest designs in everything, me included. When I got my first phone I really didn’t pay attention to the design. I don’t think that anyone around my age group back then cared too much about what their phone looked like. As long as my phone texted and called out I was satisfied. Now I can’t live without my smart phone. I have to have all my apps my navigation system, easy internet access and definitely my music. I don’t even use my iPod anymore I just download all my music and videos to my phone. So as you can tell my phone plays a big part in my life that’s why I say I can’t live without my phone. Like Daniel H. Pink said in A Whole New Mind “Design that is, utility enhanced by significance.” Design is much more than we perceive just by looking. Its changing the world and we are all lucky enough to be a part of it.