Here’s something you’ve probably noticed in passing: the UK three-pronged plug is incredibly bulky. Forget about sliding it into a thin tablet case. The British Standard was designed in 1947, long before anyone figured it would be used to charge anything as svelte as the iPad Air.
While he was a student at the Royal College of Art in London, Min-Kyu Choi carried around his laptop a lot. He carted it and his charger in a bag, which worked OK until the charger’s massive prongs gave his laptop a good scratch. As he looked at the culprit, he realized that the monstrous UK charger is not at all designed for portability; it’s completely out of sync with the sleek and slim gadgets that it’s used to charge.
The whole situation needed a makeover. Although he couldn’t change the plug’s three-prong design, Choi thought that perhaps he could change the way it’s stored while not in the socket. So he started sketching. What he came up with was a collapsible plug, straight out of Transformers. His design positioned the two horizontal plugs on a swivel. When they were in the wall, they’d appear in the normal configuration. But when not in use, the horizontal prongs could be rotated 90 degrees, so all three would line up vertically. The faceplate would then crack in half and fold back like bird wings. Choi’s swivel-and-fold innovation would allow the plug to pack flat.
Early sketches of the Mu plug
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