Design Matters

For many, the Lucigraph earned the nick name “Lazy Lucy”

Having worked in the design field for well over 25 years, I’ve seen many design tools come and go. When I first started my career most of the design work was done with devices and gizmos that many people today would not even recognize. Except of course for pencils and paper. It’s possible that most would not even be able to guess what many of these tools did. The stat camera, proportional wheel, pica rule, Lucigraph, ruling pen, waxer, rubylith film, color-aid paper, Acu-Arc, and of course the rotary lead pointer are just a few of the relics I remember from another era. There are hundreds more that I haven’t mentioned, or perhaps can’t recall so easily. In most cases the computer has replaced these historical tools with software applications that make the design process so much easier. Pointing and clicking is certainly a bit easier than running a waxer.

One thing, however, that has not been replaced is drawing. In my mind, drawing is an essential design tool that will never become obsolete. I’m talking about good old fashioned paper and pencil drawings. Nothing fancy here, just basic drawing. Man has made drawings like this since we lived in caves. Many are quite beautiful in their own right.

Lascaux cave drawings are both simple and beautiful

Years ago design drawings were created primarily to sway clients. They were tools to communicate to the design illiterate the fanciful concepts imagined by designers. They also created separation between those who understood and created art, and those who barely knew how to spell it. It was easy to dazzle a client with a spiffy sketch, or a detailed rendering. Unfortunately, the design often took a backseat to drawing technique. A spartan Dieter Rams design for Braun would never have won out in a all out rendering contest. Can you imagine a detailed rendering of a ThinkPad? Nothing more than a simple black box.

Although the talent, manual dexterity, and mastery of illustration techniques continues to impress me for full blown renderings, it’s design working drawings that interest me the most now. These are the drawings that tell the real story. Designers make them for themselves, not to impress others. They often contain notes, unresolved details, coffee stains, and mistakes. There is a certain spontaneity to them. The art of imperfection shines clear.

Wonderful working sketch by design master Dieter Rams

Richard Sapper working sketch for a flat panel based computer we designed together 

When I worked at a design consulting firm in Kansas, I collaborated with excellent designers who were also highly gifted in the art of drawing. Some were so skilled that their rough working sketches often were a little too good. They looked like finished work, not initial ideas. In the consulting business this was a problem. Clients were more than happy to take a rough concept and immediately turn it into a real product. Short cutting the total design process saved consulting fees for the clients, but cost the design firm revenue. In some cases this was such a big issue that all rough sketches had to be stamped with a “PRELIMINARY CONCEPT ONLY” disclaimer. Not sure how this stopped the problem, but it certainly looked good on paper. There is nothing like a rubber stamp to lend an air of authority to a drawing.

Rough sketch created by the late and infamous Kansas designer Robert Deines in 1972. Want to guess what it is?

Mike Meister’s best attempt at making a rough pencil sketch circa 1982. He’s still working at it today.

One of my more recent working sketches for ThinkPad controls. Look familiar?

I make simple working design sketches nearly every day of my life. They aren’t intended to wow clients, instead they help me solve design problems or communicate ideas. Back in the 80’s I got pretty good at making more polished renderings, thanks to Bob and Mike, but I really don’t need to make drawing like that anymore. I can still remember Bob giving me an extensive lecture on the best way to select the correct degree of an ellipse template, and Mike showing me what marker best rendered sky reflected in matte chrome. They were true masters of their craft. Today I prefer real full size 3D models to review and present design concepts. If a rendering is required, we use computers to create them. With the right software and designer at the helm the results are amazing. Okay, when compared to a hand created sketch they’re somewhat sterile, but that is a different topic.

I’m not about to surrender my pencil and paper. Drawing is part of my life and connected to how I think. If  Bob was still alive, he would complain a little about my perspective being “off” and Mike would still want to add a few well selected reflections, but I think they would both be proud.

David Hill

Kansas backroads haven’t changed much since I lived there 30 years ago. Thanks to David Rush for the photo.

This must be the year of the podcast. I just finished another one where I was interviewed about my design education/background, what I did at IBM, and what I do at Lenovo.  My design educational roots stretch back to studying architecture in Oklahoma and ultimately industrial design at the University Kansas, where I graduated in the early 80’s. Yes, they have a basketball team too. Karel Vredenburg conducted the interview last Friday.  Karel is responsible for driving the visual and interaction/user experience design of IBM software, hardware, websites, and services.  He also leads the development of IBM’s user experience design processes, methods, assets, and tools, for their deployment company-wide. I first met Karel back in the early days of UCD at IBM. You can read more about him here.

I thought my Design Matters readers would find the content interesting. You can give it a listen here.

David Hill

Vibratory plow circa 1980

I’ve said it often, but it’s worth repeating. Design is much more than a styling exercise. Design solves problems. Understanding what problems exist, however, can be a challenge for the designer. We’ve all read market research reports, peered through the two way mirror at a focus group, or talked directly to customers. These are all great tools, but in the world of design research, more is more. One of my favorite methods for gathering insight is good old fashioned field work. The power of direct observation is enormous.

Years ago I was working on the design of a underground trencher manufactured by a company in Perry Oklahoma. It was a curious walk behind device that sliced a narrow slit in the ground to bury television cables. It was powered by a gasoline engine that spun a large eccentric weight that caused a huge sharpened blade to vibrate wildly slicing through the Earth like butter. The designers involved, including myself, were invited to meet with the engineering team. They were a friendly bunch and quickly showed off their thinking about how to improve the efficiency of the mechanism while saving cost. Our challenge was to bend metal around the innards and make it look “presentable”. The customer for these machines is actually the cable television installers who lay the cable through your backyard. My immediate question was where can we see these machines in use or better yet use one? We were quickly offered to test drive one of the earlier generation machines in the field behind the plant, which we did. It was challenging to use but we certainly learned a lot. I wanted more.

I suggested that we meet with a real operator of the current machine. We called the local cable television company and  to our surprise were granted an audience with a experienced operator, Larry. We met Larry in the equipment yard near the end of the day and were prepared with pads and pencils to record the feedback we were expecting. During the interview he nearly immediately told us that the design of the machine was fine, in fact he liked it. We kept pushing on him for more insight, but got the same answer over and over again. It was fine. Finally I asked him if we could see the machine in question. Larry happily led us to a tin shed at the back of the yard and opened the sliding door to reveal a well worn mechanical marvel. Immediately I spotted three modifications that had been made to the machine by someone. Was it Larry? It really didn’t matter, this was exactly what we were looking for!

The most obvious modification was a  make-shift support structure that  had been welded to the outside of the machine to hold the battery. The machine as manufactured hides the battery inside a steel enclosure with a snarl of  hydraulic valves, hoses and assorted wiring. It was crude in execution, but appeared to substantially made. I immediately asked Larry why he moved the battery.  His response was that the machine is not used  in the winter because the ground is too hard to slice through. Every spring when they fire it up the battery is dead from sitting dormant. With the battery buried behind an access panel and 8 bolts it is a huge pain in the neck to attatch the jumper cables. “Much easier to jump the thing if the battery is on the outside” , quiped Larry.

We also found a hole cut into the side of a shroud to peek through and see hydraulic levels, and a  crudely  crafted cable spool holder that used a cast off broom stick as an axle. Without the spool holder they had to employ another operator to hold the spool on the broom stick above his head while walking backwards. I can only imagine what that must have been like. 

The lesson here is that asking questions only goes so far. Nothing can beat field observation when it comes to uncovering innovation opportunity. In case you’re curious,  we made battery access  far easier and built in a cable spool holder on the design concept we created.

David Hill

Worms-eye View

We just announced a series of new ThinkCentre all business desktops with a revitalized design. My favorite is the A Series tower. Towers just seem more interesting from a design perspective. The are almost like designing a skyscraper. Similar proportions and monolithic forms  make the connection for me. I guess I am not the only one to make this connection, so do many photographers.  Computer towers are often photographed for marketing materials with a perspective that strongly reinforces that connection. I have seen more worms-eye views of towers than I can even begin to remember. I admit they look more dramatic, menacing and powerful from a low angle, but these views have nothing to do with how you actually use or interact with one. Is the architecture connection one about drama or reality?

 Previous Generation Tower as Seen From a Chair

Lets face it , for the most part towers end up on the floor with a discombobulated snarl of cables, disgusting dust bunnies and last months cracker crumbs. We see them from above,  not from below. That epiphany was the inspiration for the new design. When we reviewed study models during the development process I refused to comment on the design unless the models  were placed on the floor and I was seated next to them like a real user. I wasn’t trying to be an overbearing boss, my intention was to force a new way of thinking into the design process. It became very obvious to me that  most towers were not designed with this in mind. Power switches, USB ports, audio jacks, etc. were often place too close to the floor or were impossible to see  or use from a natural seated position. Can you imagine using your cars CD player if it were mounted under the seat where you couldn’t possibly see or touch the controls? You would have to become adept at using your foot to insert the disk I suppose.

New Design as Seen From a Chair

After creating numerous sketches and study models  of different design variations,  we finally zeroed in on a configuration that moved the power switch to the top of an angled handle and inclined all the other connectors on a similar upward facing plane. The difference in being able to see and use them is astonishingly simple, but  superior. We made sure the power switch is protected from accidental use by angling the plane on which it is located and by encircling it with a raised chrome ring. This is similar to what you might find on a piece of military hardware.  You don’t want to accidently push some buttons in that environment either. The dot in the center of the button neatly illuminates when the machine is powered on and is easy to see. We retained a carry  handle that we pioneered back in the PS/1 days not only for convenience but to give the machine a distinctive character and profile.

Carry Handle

One other goal we had was to simplify the overall visual impression of the machine, while staying true to the well established Think design language. Simple is at the root of  Think design. To achieve that goal we covered the optical drives with simple flaps that automatically fold down when the media is ejected . They also protect the drives from dust and dirt when not being used. The eject buttons are aligned to the side of the machine  so you can easily find them by sliding your hand down the edge until you feel them. We added new inclined venting that matches the pattern on our ThinkVision monitors and adds a jaunty quality.  If it weren’t for those pesky heat dissapation requirements we would have preferred none.

Why didn’t we do this concept sooner? I’m not really sure how to answer that.  Design inspiration can come at any time from market research, customer feedback, a flea market, or good old design intuition.  Sometimes all it takes is a new point of view. 

David Hill

I recently read an interesting article by IEEE Spectrum writer Robert W. Lucky called The Blinking Light. His thesis is that people miss the blinking lights so long associated with computers, and that they add charisma and personality to an object that otherwise would be devoid of all interest. If you are as old as I am, you surely remember the Hollywood versions of computers from the 60’s and 70’s. Irwin Allen was perhaps the master of blinking light technology with his television classics such as Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space, and the often maligned Time Tunnel. I have no idea what all those lights were for, but Lee Meriwether apparently did. More blinking lights meant more power, plain and simple.

Maya Lin, of Vietnam War Memorial design fame, even bought into the blinking light theme for her work with Thinking Machines Corporation in the early 90’s. They were very simple black box designs with a huge matriix of blinking red LED’s. I read somewhere they eventually ended up being used as movie props for Jurassic Park. Interesting twist of fate.

I personally was drug into the blinking light world while designing mid-range business computers for IBM back in my Minnesota days. Maybe there are a few people out there who remember System 36/38 or even AS/400. At the time we had a small single processor activity light that blinked on rare occasions like a lethargic firefly. It really didn’t do much other than give the operator a warm feeling that something good was happening. The IBM lab director at the time insisted that a single LED was a missed design opportunity. His vision was more along the lines of Irwin Allen. He totally loved blinking lights, the more the merrier. If we had proposed adding a Jacob’s Ladder straight out of Dr. Frankenstein’s lab, he would probably have seriously considered the addition.

Wayne Aderman, a retired IBM design colleague of mine, and I were charged with inventing what boiled down to a gizzy-blinky light show that loosely implied processor activity. The human factors engineer we worked with, a true purist, hated the idea. It provided no added information and detracted from the ”user critical” information displayed by the already complex control panel. “How do we tell the operator which lights to pay attention to and which lights to ignore?” was his mantra. Wayne liked to simply call it the wizometer.

In the end, after a host of very painful meetings and and few trips to the boss’s office we added lights. Wayne and I minimized the negative impact on the system usability by making the design rather subdued. It looked similar to a LED based level meter on a old school cassette recorder. Engineering spent weeks trying to invent an algorithm to make the lights dance wildly based on “processor activity”. In the end, I honestly think they just blinked randomly. Perhaps they should have consulted with Irwin Allen, I’m sure he already had the technology well in hand.

David Hill

Americans have had a love affair with the automobile for decades. It’s forever etched into our society and culture like the horse was for the cowboy. For most of us it begins at a very early age. Toy cars, model cars, movies about cars, and of course our first car are all part of the deal. My first real car was a 1969 VW “Beetle.” It was a beautiful dark green with a pure white interior. I think it cost about $1800 new. I loved that car, the design, and what it stood for. If only I had never sold it.

Interesting that we even develop nicknames like ”Beetle” for our cultural favorites. The real name was the Volkswagen Type 1. Hard to have a realtionship with a number. More Beetles, 21 million total, were sold than any other car design in history.  It should have been the car that Volkswagen marketing people hated due to it’s lack of newness, but instead they turned it into one of the most formidable designs, brands and advertising campaigns in history. As Beetlemania swept the nation during the 60’s, Volkswagen drivers began to descreetly signal like owners with a raised fore finger as they passed to acknowledge membership in the devote group. Today this near cult-like behavior is reserved only for fellow motorcyclists. Cars need not apply.

People develop incredible brand loyalties for their favorite cars. They wash, wax, detail, and polish them. They modify, restore, collect, and of course talk about them whenever possible. People often become so hooked that they buy them for life whenever possible. In 1999 Volkswagen even brought the much celebrated “Beetle” back to life , although in a much altered state. The design was the brainchild of J Mays, a fellow Oklahoman who I would like to meet someday to swap cultural backwater stories.

Oddly enough car “personalities”  are even transferred to other products. My favorite of course being ThinkPad. I can’t begin to tell you how many meetings I have been in where the car analogy has been made. By that I mean a comparison was drawn between ThinkPad and a specific automobile brand. I’ve done it many times to drive home a point with greater clarity. The referenced car can be from the past or on the market today, it really doesn’t matter. It’s a larger challenge, however, to draw a comparison to the legendary Studebaker Avanti, Ford Edsel, or AMC Pacer in a crowd of 20 somethings than the latest incarnation of the venerable Mustang. I prefer the original.

I’ve heard ThinkPad compared to numerous car brands over the years. I’m sure you can imagine a few on your own. I thought it would be interesting to poll the Design Matters readers to see which of the ones I’ve heard most often mentioned hit home with you. If you don’t see the one you relate to most, feel free to add a comment with your own thoughts.

David Hill

For years automotive manufacturers have tried to disguise forthcoming models or concept cars from the proverbial spy photo. Photographers have been known to camp out in key locations hoping to snap a glimpse of the next generation vehicle with a lens so long they can barely be lifted. It must be a strange job creating patterns and stick on visual distractors to hide the relevant lines, contours and other design features.  I’m sure there is a art to this not so different from the design of camouflage for the military.

Photo Credit: Carsspyphotos.com

For the ThinkPad design team this would be a rather difficult challenge. How many ways can you disguise a black rectangle?  Strange stripes, stick on masks and the like just won’t cut it. The profile is just too distinctive. Maybe we should just try sticking on a cheesy fake mustache. The “smarty” version is so 70’s and smug looking. No thanks.

David Hill

It’s not often that the design of our ThinkVantage software gets specific mention in a product review. It seems that in general reviewers are far more intrigued with hardware than the included software. The latest version of our Access Connections for the Vista operating system changed that. It was singled out in a recent review of the W700. Chris Connolly at Hothardware.com wrote the review. I never would have guessed that Access Connections could challenge the W700 beast for attention. I was very glad to see the recognition for one of my favorite ThinkVantage Technologies and the hard work that went into the design. I use it everyday to make connecting easier.

Here is a quote from the review:

“Typically, OEM-created software to handle network connectivity is far below the quality level of Windows’s native Vista Wi-Fi software suite, which means we usually disable the bundled connectivity software. Lenovo has done some really great stuff on this end, though. Through their “Access Connections” software, you can see in a visual manner which Wi-Fi hotspots are the closest and giving you the best signal, along with which ones are locked. It’s an amazingly simple but useful way for connecting to Wi-Fi hot-spots.”  Chris Connolloy

Typically when I write about our offerings, I focus on what we have done, not how we got there. I thought why not take a peek into the development process and let Design Matters readers see the thinking that went into the new GUI. This is best seen by showing some of the early sketches that were created along the way. Design is very much a journey, not just a final destination.

Our design goal was to take advantage of some of the new Vista GUI features to both enhance the visual appeal and usability. We were proud of the 3D model we introduced a few years back, but were convinced it could be enhanced.

Original Design

We decided to retain the  3D connectivity design model where the ThinkPad is at the center of the universe, but we wanted to increase the visual richness and improve overall clarity. The following sketches show a progression of ideas aimed at just that. You can see how we created a continuum of 3D experiments leading up to the final design. The first sketch seemed too flat in appearance and a little too cartoon like, we dropped the second idea because it looked too much like a wedding cake. I don’t like my ThinkPad that much. There are many more sketchs, I chose to show these two.

We also adjusted the design of the TrackPoint inspired ThinkVantage red dot icons to increase the visual appeal. They now look more 3D and are simpler in terms of color. They almost look good enought to eat.

This is the final design for the find wireless application that showcases what we did. I really like where this ended up. Great to see others like what we did. Thanks to my graphic designers Karen Kluttz  and Yamato’s Shigeyuki Kimura, and to Neil Ganey who provided critical human factors direction. I think they got this one right.

Oh by the way, they also really liked the W700 hardware  : )

David Hill

Having lived through the design of the X300 it’s very easy to fall in love with thin and light. Beauty, however, is in the eye of the beholder. Not everyone is bent on owning an ultraportable, even the richly featured X300. There is a certain type of user who demands ultimate power over all other attributes. As people in fields such as digital content creation, computer-aided design and manufacturing, digital photography and science fields become increasingly mobile, they are demanding the full-featured performance of a desktop workstation in a mobile workstation. In a nutshell, they want extreme performance, not wafer thin.

Today we announced what I think these demanding customers are looking for. The ThinkPad W700 takes extreme performance and user experience to new levels. This thing is a 17″ wide screen nitro burning funny car. You can read all the speeds and feeds details here. In addition to the amazing under the hood specs, there are pioneering features that interest me as a designer.

As an option we include the industry’s first built-in palm rest digitizer and color calibrator. Designed for digital content creators and users, the mobile workstation’s digitizer helps them easily configure an image, either mapping it to the entire screen or to an area defined by the user. We used the same stylus as our ThinkPad tablet. High performance users, especially digital photographers, will love the models with the built-in color calibrator. Being able to see accurate color is very important to designers. The calibrator automatically adjusts the display’s color in up to half the time of many external calibrators and with higher accuracy. The end result is highly accurate, true-to-life images in an integrated easy to use package. The optional 400-nit WUXGA display provides up to twice the brightness of earlier ThinkPad mobile workstation models, and the 72 percent wide color gamut provides more than 50 percent greater color intensity. The image quality is stunning.

Designing this one was a big challenge, no pun intended. We spent a lot of time determining the size of the palm rest, digitizer pad size and position. As usual there is not a single wasted cubic millimeter inside the W700. Even a machine of this size goes through the same level of analysis and tradeoffs for the placement of every component. Just because the puzzle pieces are larger it doesn’t make finding the ultimate solution easier.

Okay it’s big, but more importantly it’s a beast. I think this one will have great appeal for designers or anyone else who wants extreme performance.

David Hill

Designers are always looking for new and creative ways to solve the problems they face. Ideas are often inspired by things we see, own, or have used. A few months ago I started a weekly event within my team called “The Design of the Week.” The idea is that designers bring in something that inspires them from a design perspective, talk about it in front of the entire team, and then place it on a display pedestal for a week as a reminder and conversation piece. It’s a bit like a design show and tell. The feedback from my team has been very positive. We’ve all learned something in the process and it has been great fun.

I kicked off the first session by showing a great Sake carafe from Japan. It’s a blown glass form that has a embedded glass chamber that suspends and isolates the ice from the Sake so that it can’t be diluted by melting ice. There is nothing worse than a diluted Sake. Some of the designs brought in by my team include a unique coat rack that suspends from the ceiling with aircraft cable, a LED flashlight that stands on it’s own tripod, a cork screw that resembles a set of brass knuckles, and a classic claw hammer with a wonderful stacked leather handle.

We intend to keep this going throughout the year as a  source for design inspiration. We may possibly switch in 2009 to the “Bad design of the Week” to honor the things that frustrate us most. I’ll continue to share some of the designs as the year progresses.

David Hill