Design Matters

The response to my If ThinkPad Was a Car blog and related poll has been very interesting. Clearly Volvo is winning the day by a wide margin. Not too big of a surprise to me. For years Volvo has been known for making exceptionally engineered, solid, reliable and safety minded cars with a reserved classic design. Sounds a lot like the ThinkPad brand attributes to me. Maybe Volvo needs to go back to making them a bit more boxy, or maybe we need a heated keyboard for those cold Swedish nights. Thanks for participating in the poll.

David Hill 

I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who participated in our Power Manager survey and shared some of their thoughts in the comments. We’ve gotten some good feedback and you may see some of it incorporated in a forthcoming revised interface.

David Hill

Ask most any ThinkPad fan what pointing device they prefer and the answer will be unanimous: the trademark TrackPoint. A group of CNET editors came together recently asking the same question about a “new ultraportable laptop” that is equipped with a “pointing stick, but no touch pad.” I wonder which laptop it could be.

Head over to the CNET post and let them know which pointing device you prefer, and tell them where you came from.

David Hill

We often get questions about the layout of notebook keyboards from our customers. People want to understand what drives the location of certain keys. Many times this is very difficult to explain. Key location is not always related to detailed human factors or usability analysis. History often plays a role. Have you ever tried to rationalize the QWERTY layout to someone who has never used or possibly even seen a typewriter? Fortunately most of the questions we see center around the location of very specific keys rather than global questions like the validity of the QWERTY layout.

In keeping with our continued desire to gather input from the readers of Design Matters, my team has created a detailed survey on this subject. Your input can help us get your favorite keys in the rights places. You can take the survey here. Thanks for your interest and time.

David Hill

I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone that took the survey, signed up for future surveys, or left us a comment here. We’ve had over 440 people take the survey to date and gotten a lot of helpful feedback.

Looking at the comments in the previous post, the common discussion point is digital video of some sort and the aging 56K modem. Hopefully I will be able to talk more about these points soon.

David Hill

It seems like every time I read a review of a notebook computer, including our own, the topic of ports comes up. People have very strong opinions on this hot topic. It’s nearly as emotionally charged as religion or politics. The connector location is usually questioned, but more often than not the actual types and numbers of ports is even more intensely debated. Since notebooks have a limited area for placing connectors (there is only so much beach front real estate) I’m sure you can imagine the discussions that connectors generate during the development of a new ThinkPad. I thought it would be a good idea to go straight to my Design Matters readers and and gather data directly. We have created a brief survey on port usage where we can collect data on this subject. This is your big chance to have your vote counted as we develop future generation ThinkPads. Please click here to take the survey. Thanks for your time and input.

David Hill

I want to thank everyone that voted in this latest poll and shared their thoughts in the comments. The final results are shown below and we will be factoring this data into our future product decisions.

David Hill

Using a ThinkPad on an airplane is obviously a common occurence for anyone who owns one. Unfortunately, air travel and notebook computers don’t always mix. Where do you put your computer bag? In the over-head or under the seat in front of you? What if the overhead is full and you have the bulkhead seat? Did I remember to turn off the wireless radio? Is that guy next to me trying to read my e mail? Is she going to pour that drink on my keyboard?

My favorite is dealing with the annoying guy who always seems to be in the seat in front of me that insists on slamming his seat into full recline without a care in the world. I like to call this one “The Crusher”. Somehow I have managed to avoid having my ThinkPad destroyed by one of these types, but just barely. You need to develop a sixth sense that allows you to anticipate the free-fall and instantly snatch your ThinkPad out of harms way. I recently sat next to a unfortunate who had his notebook helplessly pinned between the tray table and coat hook. I had no idea you could bend a notebook display that far.

Several years ago I purchased two rows of coach class airplane seats to help us deal with this topic more effectively. The idea was that we could study the problem using actual seating conditions, rather than debating tray table dimensions and seating geometry. At the time I had no idea how hard it would be to acquire the seats or for that matter getting the spacing right. I certainly got some strange looks the first time I pulled out my tape measure on the plane ride to New York.

The seats have since become an invaluable asset for making design decisions and creating advanced concepts. They have also become quite the conversation piece. Nearly everyone who comes to our lab feels compelled to take them for a spin. For accuracy the seat pockets hold a few motion sickness bags, boring magazines, and pretzel crumbs.

In the interest of learning more about how people use their ThinkPad on planes, we’ve created a short on-line survey that we would like to have you take. We hope to continue using surveys like this, in addition to our polls, to help us refine future products. The link below will take you there.

Survey

If you would like to receive e-mails about future surveys, please visit our E-mail signup page and make sure to choose “Offers to participate in studies to improve our products.” While this page is technically only on our U.S. website, any members of our international audience can submit your e-mail address for these surveys. Please note that they will be English only at this time. Our standard privacy policy applies to these, so you don’t have to worry about us abusing your e-mail address.

David Hill

What a reaction to the post and poll about stripes and ThinkPad. You clearly have a position on stripes and we agree. We plan on putting the stripes back at the earliest date possible. Changes like this are complex due to tooling costs, lead times, and other manufacturing or supply chain constraints. We plan on continued use of this blog as a forum for discussing ThinkPad future design. Thanks for the feedback.

David Hill

The Z Series was the first major departure from ThinkPad design in a long time. Not only did we introduce the first widescreen ThinkPad, but we offered an authentic Titanium cover option. The Z Series also included a seemingly subtle change in design direction for the ThinkPad keyboard: we removed the colored stripes from the Trackpoint buttons. We did this not to save a penny or two, but to visually simplify the interior. We didn’t get any negative feedback on that change, so we chose to roll the update across the entire product family. Since then some people have told us they miss the stripes, others haven’t even noticed.

Oddly enough the stripes really provide very little utility. Originally they were intended to visually link the red TrackPoint cap to the buttons that do the clicking. In 1992 this seemed important, today the need is perhaps questionable. Or is it?

Now we are reconsidering this change, perhaps we went too far in simplifying the interior. Although the utility can be argued, the familiarity is also important for a brand so strongly connected to it’s design as ThinkPad.

I’d love to get your feedback on this topic. We’ve included a new poll to make this easier.

David Hill