All of us here at Catalyst are full-on gadget freaks. Frankly, it comes with the territory. When you develop and analyze user experiences for a living, you can’t help being fascinated with the ways in which design can solve (or fail to solve) problems and make living easier and more fun. But Peter holds a special status as the office Edison… Case in point: Here’s his solution to the age-old problem of how to bring your legally-purchased digital audio with you into the swimming pool.

The setup is a combination of a watertight “Otterbox” and a pair of headphones specially designed for in-water use… About his rig, Peter has this to say:

“Definitely makes swimming laps more interesting – and the sound is excellent, even underwater. The biggest problem is the combination of the Swimman headphones which require an adapter to change the headphone plug from 2.5mm to 3.5mm which adds a 2” dongle to the end of the headphone plug. Also, after trying several “behind the head” configurations it only resulted in frustration as the setup was unstable (especially during flip-turns!). The best result so far comes from holding the player in the waistband of my swimsuit. The optimal method would be to get a thin neoprene (wetsuit material) holder to carry the player and excess headphone cable in the small of my back. I have spoken with Swimman who said they will be launching a new version of their headphones in November with the updated, normal jack. Stay tuned…”

For those of you who aren’t music lovers, Otterbox also makes nifty watertight cases for your cigars and Zippo lighter. Not sure how you light your cigar in the pool, but, then again, I don’t smoke…

What the heck, the holidays are fast approaching, so let’s slot the Peter Hughes Underwater Shuffle Rig in at # 8 on the CoFactors 2005 Holiday Gift Guide.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 5th, 2005 at 3:45 pm and is filed under Finds, 2005 Gift Guide.