Product Development Policy
Creating products to make learner's dreams come true
CASIO’s product development philosophy is "0 → 1" (create something from nothing); to contribute to the advancement of society by discovering the latent needs of the public and by developing new products and values which did not exist.
In the educational field, CASIO understands that it is important to have a firm grasp of the teachers’ and students’ needs. Upon this understanding, our engineers visit schools and attend classes so that we can listen to the teachers’ and the students’ thoughts of what struggles they have or what is needed, which leads for us to gain first-hand understanding of such needs.
New product ideas inspired from this experience are refined through consultation with collaborative educational professionals and by receiving their feedback. We put plenty of time on the development process itself, but having such evaluation from professionals at an early stage is what helps products be genuine educational devices that “supports learning.” This is CASIO’s goal.
We also aim to provide products that are optimized to each country’s curriculum. Working together with local educational institutions, we verify the curriculum, as well as examine necessary specifications and functions needed on the device .
We are expanding the implementation of this localized product model which have a different specification for each country.
What we emphasize in our educational field "0 → 1" development, is the importance of listening to the invaluable thoughts of educational professionals and institutions. Adherence to this process is our most important policy.
We put faith on our educational devices and GAKUHAN activities will help "fulfill the learners (children, etc.) dreams". We hope to continuously contribute towards this goal and are looking forward to listening on your thoughts, so that your views can be incorporated in our next new product of CASIO's educational devices.
Development "ClassWiz"
- True story of Creation of the world-first high-resolution display scientific calculator –
By Hiroshi Uejima , Chief Developer of ClassWiz
Nobody loved Scientific Calculator
I'm very proud of launch ClassWiz Line-up thirdly in the world to the countries here.
Taking this opportunity, let me tell something about the reason why I decided to develop ClassWiz.
The first trigger was my experience which occurred at my entrance into university in 1999.
Right after the entry, textbook sale exhibition was hold by university co-op store.
Textbooks were classified by every faculty on the shelves and innocent freshmen had to buy all the textbook of mandatory in liberal arts. Among those materials, there was "CASIO fx-3600P.
My first impression on that machine was that it is a kind of Hi-Tech gadget, and it made me feel that I became a students with math and science majors.
Unfortunately, at that time, my knowledge about "Scientific Calculator" was very shallow and I thought it can calculate sin/cos/tan only.
After all, I used my machine for very limited function only during my school days.
I think back my schooldays now, fx-3600P could have been very helpful machine for my study or exam if I could fully utilize it.
Became a Developer of Scientific Calculator
I became a developer of Scientific Calculator when I entered CASIO after my graduation from university.
I had to thought seriously "Why scientific Calculator is very hard to use ?" and found the critical facts that the worst dislike subject by Japanese high-school students is math, and the second worst is foreign language (from KANKO investigation, 2007).
Even math is already too much for students, scientific calculator requires to understand the math scheme expressed by foreign language.
It is, let's say, complex in the double punch of the worst and second worst dislike subject.
And to make things worse, math formula is described by "abbreviation" in foreign language in the display of the scientific calculator. The "worst dislike math" is described by the abbreviation in the "second dislike subject".
I had to realize that the products I have been trying my best to develop is a conglomerate of worst dislike factors.
Beloved Scientific Calculator
I felt serious shock when I realized that the products I have been contributing is a "dislike conglomerate".
I've got a strong motivation to develop a beloved machine. When I found the project of develop a new scientific calculator with high-resolution display realized by new LSI, I immediately participate it.
The point is ; describing math formula by full description, not by abbreviated expression.
I quickly gave up escape from math because of the characteristics of the product I develop, but at least,
I wanted to reduce dislike factor from two to one.
And also, ClassWiz has many friendly features for heavy users of current products, such as "Line Input Mode".
Thanks to those features, I think ClassWiz could lower the barriers of scientific calculator for beginner, such as high school and university freshmen, or new employee in the business firm.
Seeking ease of use
The design of fraction input key is white square on top of empty squre with bar in between both squares.
We firstly adopted this design when we made the first "natural textbook display" scientific calculator, and have been keeping using it until now.
This is good to know intuitively the function of the key as fraction input.
Further, white square indicates the place of the cursor firstly located in the display.
Number of colors of plastic-key are 3, and 5 colors for letters on the body.
Functions of keys are ordered by its color. We adopted more colors than the products of our competitors' calculators. This kind of detailed expression of many functions may disturb excellent design.
However, our R&D division and design team discussed very hard to satisfy both aspect.
The new ClassWiz is excellent product.
ClassWiz is the true latest achievement of CASIO whose history started with calculator.
