Chief Designer of Project Ara departs Google

Project Ara is the long-awaited effort to bring a modular smartphone to the masses. Instead of buying a smartphone and tossing it out when you upgrade, you’ll be able to swap out modules just by pulling them out and sliding new ones in. Everything from the processor to the display will be replaceable, and it seems people love this concept.

Sadly, we have some bad news. The Chief Designer of Project Ara, Dan Makoski, has left Google. His two-year contract with the ATAP team (now part of Google) has expired, and it’s not known whether he had a chance to renew the contract. He’s off to work at Capital One to try to change the way people and banks manage money.

Of course, this leaves Project Ara without a chief designer, which is quite an important role. We have no doubt that the project will manage just fine, as it’s come too far to just stop here, but it’ll be interesting to see how the team will work around the loss of Makoski. And of course we’ll have to see if other members of the team will be leaving during the development of Ara.

source: androidandme