Lenovo is starting the decade out right with the announcement of two new ThinkPads. I made a couple of short videos that talk about the design thinking that went into each of them. I plan to write a few blogs during the next week or so with more details about keyboards, the color red, and something we call sophisticated simplicity. Enjoy.
Interesting article by Sal Cangeloso at Geek.com regarding the introduction of ThinkPad Edge as a compliment to the ongoing classic line.
Check out the Yamato Thinking blog for details on what Lenovo is doing with regard to the Fn/Ctrl debate. Thanks for all the feedback that has led us to take this action.
I’ve been out of the office for the last 10 days riding the Trans-America Trail with 3 other motorcyclists. Rick Plant and Matt Evans from Lenovo and David Rush, a long time friend of mine from Dallas, made the trek. We rode for 7 days and covered 1500 miles from Jellico Tennesse to Bartlesville Oklahoma. Bartlesville is the “cultural backwater” where I grew up.
For the most part the route was non-paved. We traversed dusty dirt roads, jagged gravel, swollen creek beds, flooded roads, raised levees, old power line trails, barren farm fields, closed bridges, and twisty asphalt connecting the whole thing together. I’ll give you a warning, the stream crossings are extraordinarly slippery. Two of our riders went down in the water, fortunately nobody got hurt. Our average speed was just over 30mph, certainly not your typical flight down the interstate. This was one of my favorite signs along the route. How did they know I was coming? It was poetic finally ending up at Bartlesville Cycle Sports. We bought the bikes there from my old friend and racer Bob Derrick well over a year ago to make this ride a reality.
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Matt blasting through a flooded road in Mississippi
Contemplating the strength of a closed wooden bridge
I took my ThinkPad x300 on the trip for e mail communication and an emergency lifeline via broadband. It worked flawlessly. Dirt, dust, vibration, and water couldn’t stop it from performing as expected. This was certainly the most extreme torture test I have personally subjected any ThinkPad to. Fantastic trip, exceptional ThinkPad.
Lenovo has just announced a partnership with the non-profit Center for Severe Weather Research to power advanced levels in tornado and severe weather research. More than 50 Think branded PC’s including ThinkPad W700’s, W500’s and X200’s will be deployed to power the largest tornado field research project of its kind. That’s right field research. Can you imagine a vehicle designed to chase tornadoes bristling with high tech doppler antennas and a fleet of onboard ThinkPad’s? Well here it is.
Doppler on Wheels Fitted with ThinkPad
Having grown up in Oklahoma and Kansas, the heart of “Tornado alley” I am very familiar with the power and wrath that can be dished out by a tornado. When I was in college, a friend of mine rode out a massive tornado by seeking shelter within the “walk- in” beer cooler at the local convenience store. He crouched on the floor of the cooler while the dozen or so glass doors wildly slapped open and closed as the tornado passed. Beer cans, gravel, and dust swirled through the air as the storm leveled the entire structure. The only thing left standing was the beer cooler and it’s contents. Fortunately, he was not without cold refreshment following the ordeal.
Notebooks.com has a really interesting article on this topic where you can learn even more about this pioneering partnership and the storm-defying hardware. I can think of no other notebook computer that could better stand up to this kind of rugged field use. Here’s to ThinkPad and the Lenovo role in helping to better understand these devastating storms.
The response to my recent blog post about a hypothetical ThinkPad netbook has been enormous. I honestly had no idea it would generate over 100 comments. It was also just featured on the PC Magazine website in an article written by Brian Heater . Thanks to all my readers for taking the time to weigh in with their thoughts and opinions on this subject.
Now my team has created a short user experience oriented survey to gather even more of your thinking on this hot topic. We truly value your input. You can take the survey here. Thanks for your ongoing support.
Lots of traction lately in the market about the emergence of netbooks as a low cost alternative for more traditional fully featured notebooks. Netbooks are a sort of basic machine, primarily optimized for e mail and web browsing. Smaller size, lower performance. I don’t recommend that you try to beat Kasparov with one of these. This is how PC World describes the category.
Netbooks (aka mini-notebooks, mini-notes or “laptots”) are perfect travel companions and meet basic computing needs, including e-mailing, Web surfing, and document creation. Best of all, these low-powered machines cost less than the standard-issue laptop. PC World
Lenovo already sells a very successful IdeaPad netbook called the S10. The product runs on the popular Intel Atom processor weighing in at 2.65 pounds and is about an inch thin. The S10 has received lots of very positive reviews since we introduced it. PC World included the S10 in their top 10 netbook list claiming the number 3 position with a nicely designed machine that even comes in several colors. Pink is one of the choices.
What if Lenovo was to make a ThinkPad branded netbook? Would you say, “What a relief, finally a netbook that really means business” ? What would you like to see in such a hypothetical offering? How black and square should we make it? Maybe it should come in colors like the IdeaPad S10. Could I interest you in a PinkPad?
Seriously, designing a netbook is a difficult task that is very different from designing a traditional ThinkPad. These micro marvels just don’t exist without making trade-offs. User experience items like keyboard stroke, overall layout, key spacing, palmrest size, and pointing device options are all instantly thrown under the development electron microscope for examination. Beyond the usability issues, we also have to balance the typical performance criteria such as weight, thickness, battery life, wireless technology, footprint and of course cost. Hard to leave cost out of this equation. This is all about reaching the optimum balance point. It’s very important to remember that when we are done, these “laptots” are not intended to be the performance rival of your newly purchased W700. Different user scenario, different product. If the netbook performance and usability compromises don’t interest you, but portability does, you should really check out the ThinkPad X200.
I would love to get your thoughts on this topic. Thanks.
I’ve often talked about where design inspiration comes from and how there is no clear formula for it. I personally have found ideas in some of the strangest places. The bright red dipstick handle on my BMW, the clever cord storage on my 25 year old Braun coffee grinder, and the carry handle from a M-16 have all influenced designs that I have been associated with. This is all part of the creative process.
Lately, however, I have seen a trend by others to take design inspiration to to an uncomfortable place. For the sake of this discussion I’m going to put this type of design deja vu into three broad categories:
Ride the wave:
Apply the basic design theme to something else and hope you can ride the wave to profitability. The best example I have for this one is the barrage of translucent candy colored products that flooded the market a few years ago. At one point it was nearly impossible to buy even a basic stapler that wasn’t rendered in this manner. Finally I can buy one that doesn’t make me look goofy for owning it.
Intentionally Similar:
These are the kinds of things that are within the same product category but look confusingly similar to a highly visible and successful design already in market. Maybe a few details are a bit different, textures, split lines, etc. They are not totally identical, but the close resemblance is not by accident. The fashion industry has been plagued by this for years. Lately I’ve seen lots of activity in this category within the notebook computer space. How many minimalistic aluminum computers have you seen in the news? Black square ones with contrasting metal hinges have also surfaced. I wonder where they got that idea?
Knock Off:
A knock off is created to be as identical as possible with the intent of fooling either the buyer or others into believing it is the real thing. Often these include an unauthorized use of the manufacturers logo. I’m sure many of you have seen knockoff products being sold out of the trunk of a car deep within the bowels of New York City. Are you sure those sunglasses are real? Look closely. On occasion the logos are slightly changed or spelled incorrectly hoping nobody will notice. Generally speaking this category will cause lawyers to spring into action. This depends on the type of design or trademark protection that may be in place by the original manufacturer. Yes, a design can be patented to protect what is called the ornamental quality. Design patents do not cover any utility or functionality. That is the domain of a utility patent.
Market success seems to breed this kind of thinking. I find it hard to venture into this questionable space . Oddly enough the Volkswagen beetle, the most successful car in history, was never the victim of design deja vu. It was so dramatically unique that nobody ever dared to wade into their territory. I’m a big Picasso fan, but I find it hard to agree with his famous quotation ” Good Artists copy, great artists steal.” I prefer to let inspiration take me to a new place, not somewhere already occupied.
We used to have a very wordy set up instruction booklet and related poster that shipped with every desktop computer we manufactured. They were translated into a zillion different languages based on what country or geography they were headed to. Although they were useful aids in setting up your computer, they added a great deal of cost and complexity to our business. At one point we were asked to remove them in order to save cost. Rather than risk customer satisfaction issues, I countered the proposal with a plan to create a single poster that could be used in any country. Obviously this meant that the poster needed to be wordless. Not as easy at it may seem, but my design team rose to the challenge with their usual creative spirit.
We studied many alternatives concepts and graphic approaches to solve the problem. Have you ever tried to develop a wordless diagram to explain such spell binding material as plugging in your modem correctly? Not exactly going to be the talk of the neighborhood book club or on the best seller list this month, but it does matter. We tested the poster ideas with real users and refined the designs over and over until we were convinced it worked. In the end what we developed was a visual language or sorts that could be replicated across a entire family of posters. As mundane as this may seem, it was a very interesting problem to solve. Many designers have struggled with similar problems for years. Cartoonists are perhaps the masters of this craft.
I once purchased a vacuum cleaner that required assembly, what doesn’t anymore, with some of the worst instructions ever created. For whatever reason I followed the directions as best I could. I’ve been told men generally never read them. They were scattered throughout the packaging in multiple one page wonders with no clear overall assembly process. Fumbling through sealed bags of oddly shaped plastic parts, wheels, cords and brushes, I suddenly found myself with the handle ceremoniously snapped into place with very clever and positive sounding “one way” molded plastic snaps. Translation: permanent. Unfortunately the scrap of paper in the next bag containing the cord assembly alerted me that the cord must be threaded through the handle prior to assembly. Great. I had to fashion a crude tool out of a yardstick, duct tape, and an oddly bent coat hanger to defeat the ”vacuum cleaner of many names” and the permanent snaps. Nice user experience.
I just read, although there are no words, a great little book written by Nigel Holmes on this exact topic. Nigel was the graphics director for Time magazine for many years. His book aptly titled, Wordless Diagrams, is a marvelous collection of artful diagrams describing everything from how to tie a scarf to the proper method for milking a jersey cow. The book is both entertaining and beautifully designed. I recommend that anyone interested in the topic of information design buy the book. Hopefully you will never have one of thos negative eureka moments assembling one of our computers.
I wanted to thank everyone who participated in the ThinkPad external keyboard survey. We set a new record with this one for the number of survey respondants. There were also a lot of comments posted to the blog and included in the survey. It clearly shows how much passion our fans have for the ThinkPad typing experience. Great feedback that will be used by my team.
Last week Richard Sapper and Tomoyuki Takahashi were in Raleigh working on the next generation ThinkPad design strategy with my team. This is exactly how Kodachi was born. We spent days reviewing highly detailed concept models carried through customs by Tom, sharing ideas, making quick study models, and debating next steps. The team never ceases to amaze me with their quantity of design models and fresh ideas.
It’s rare that a designer can take time to glance in the rear view mirror. The view always seems more compelling when imagining the future, but Kodachi is so significant that we had to celebrate the milestone. We took some time away from the packed agenda to create a short film with Sapper sharing his thoughts on design and the X300. I thought you would enjoy seeing it on the day of the official product announcement. Cheers!
The Lenovo IdeaPad U160
The Lenovo IdeaPad V460
The Lenovo IdeaCentre K320
Lenovo Meet the Modder Dean Liou