Design Matters

When I was in design school many years ago I had a very inspirational professor who continuously stressed how important it was to understand the past in order to create the future.

We were expected to become well versed on the history of design and familiar with classics as well as flops. At the time the art history department offered great courses on the history of art movements as well as architecture, but industrial design was not even mentioned. The study of my chosen field's history was pretty much a self-directed quest. Consequently, I spent hours in the university library reading design magazines and books learning about everything from Eames to the Edsel. Fortunately the University of Kansas had a great library system including an extensive collection of design periodicals dating back to the early 50's. 

Today as my team is engaged in envisioning the next generation ThinkPad family I thought it was relevant to start a discussion and poll about models of historical significance in the ThinkPad line.

Here are the candidates:

700c

The machine that started it all. Who can ever forget the simple black box 700C with it's full color screen and bright red TrackPoint? Engineered like no other, In my mind this was the first legitimate notebook computer. I'm sure many of you remember the unattractive competitive clunkers that were out there with hang-on roller balls, flimsy hinges, and dim monochrome displays.

701c

Probably the most famous ThinkPad ever. Combining the largest screen size at the time with the expanding keyboard — code-named "the Butterfly" — it was a engineering marvel for the ages. You can still see one at the Museum of Modern Art in the permanent design collection.

560

This one set the standard for a new realm of "ultraportable" computing to give "on-the-go" users a lightweight, powerful portable computing solution. It still looks amazingly thin even by today's standards. 

600

Introduced in 1998, the 600 defined a new category of thin and light notebooks. It quickly became the best selling model of all time and set the stage for what we know today as the T series. The perfect balance of performance and portability.

Add your own favorite

I love this feature of our polling capability …

This website has a great historical timeline with images.

http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/thinkpad/anniversary/history.html

There are so many seminal milestones in the history of the ThinkPad that I think it pays to understand what made them important. Please vote for your favorite historical ThinkPad on the current poll. I would also enjoy any related comments. Thanks.

David Hill

The readers have voted and wide screen has won — we’re surprised. The traditionalists were strong out of the gate when we opened this poll, but wide screen came on strong and took 51% of the votes cast. Hmm. We will digest this internally, but we think we’re on the right track with our current offerings of 4:3 and widescreen models.

Stay tuned for the next poll. We’re kicking some ideas around.

David Churbuck

One of the best things about doing this job is getting to work with great designers on some of the most exciting products in the Lenovo portfolio.

Tom Takahashi, Craig Merrigan, and I just returned from a very energizing visit to Milan where we worked directly with Richard Sapper on several future ThinkPad projects. There are few things more interesting to a designer than making the trek to the studio where one of the most influential designers of the century lives and works. Every corner of his studio is filled with models, prototypes, and objects he has designed over the last 40 plus years.  Most of them are amazingly still in production. His watchful eye and keen sense of design is always a source of inspiration and thought provocation. As we continue to think about and move forward with future ThinkPad designs we welcome any feedback you may have for future consideration.

  David Hill 

Lenovo and Apple Top Reliability Survey From Some Company We've Never Heard Of – Gizmodo

Earlier in the week a New York company, Rescuecom, issued the results of survey of PC reliability. We were pretty pumped to come out on top.

Now Gizmodo is getting in on the online voting fun and asking its readers to cast their vote. As of 11 am est, we were once again in the lead by a nose. Not that we would dare to influence your vote … but if you're inclined to exercise your opinion, here's the link.

David Churbuck

We like polls so we'll follow up our first two on TrackPoint cap preferences and glossy vs. anti-glare displays with a pole involving display aspect ratios.

Displays have traditionally adopted a 4:3 aspect ratio. In recent years, use of wide aspect ratios (16:10 or 16:9) has grown driven in part by the popularity of viewing DVD movies in letterbox formats.  Ah, but wide displays are not just for fun. Some fans of the wide format like the extra display real estate. 

There are obvious impacts to physical size and proportion and less obvious impacts like differences in DPI associated to the wider display resolutions.  There is an interesting history and theory related to preferences for viewing art, print and video.  However, we put the question to you: what do you prefer, wide or standard aspect ratio.  Check out the left menu and please cast your vote.

I thought I’d introduce myself to the readers of Design Matters by discussing the original inspiration for the design of the ThinkPad — the Bento-Bako (lunch box)

In Japan we refer to any thin, square, and handy box as a Bento-Bako, and the color is nearly always black. If it is a "special" box, then it is referred to as a Makunouchi Bento which is a more suitable metaphor for the ThinkPad. Bento refers more specifically to the contents of the box. The WikiPedia defines Bento as:

"Bent? (?? or ????, Bent?^?) is a single-portion takeout meal common in Japanese cuisine. A traditional bento consists of rice, fish or meat, and one or more pickled or cooked vegetables as a side dish. Containers range from disposable mass produced to hand crafted lacquerware. While bento are readily available at convenience stores and bento shops (???, bent?-ya) throughout Japan, it is still considered an essential skill of a Japanese housewife to be able to prepare an appealing boxed lunch."

The ThinkPad concept was born out of a collaboration with Richard Sapper, and we believe a ‘black box’ is one of the most beautiful package concepts Richard has ever advanced from his studio. Richard "predicted" the design in 1969 with his famous television set — the black ST201 manufactured by Brionvega.

The concept of thin black box was, and continues to be perfect for a notebook PC and I am proud we've been able to keep the initial concept at the core of the ThinkPad's design from its introduction in the early '90s until today. Can you think of any product whose package concept hasn't changed in more than 20 years? While some very niche products may have remained constant; in our industry we change components and technologies almost twice a year, but the fundamental design concept at the heart of the ThinkPad has always remained the same.

When we started ThinkPad, IBM did not allow the use of black for its products' body color. Why? Because the DIN standard (DIN is the German Institute for Standardization) did not accept the color black for office products. We have to satisfy all the global requirements and we also had to adhere to a design guideline to keep consistency for all IBM products. The concept of global design standards such as DIN is great but for the designers in the Far East area, it was felt to be a strong limitation to archive new and innovative designs. The design guideline was supposed to dictate the design of "big" office equipment, not small portable devices. We designed several transportable products within IBM's design guidelines before the ThinkPad. They were okay, but not very attractive in my opinion, so for the products designed for personal use, we felt we needed a completely new concept. That concept became the ThinkPad.

The design essence of the ThinkPad was, and still is, a black box with a colorful logo plate, enough, in my opinion, for a distinctive exterior. If you open the screen you will always find the newest technology, the best usability, and even more rich design details in the box. We would like to keep this concept for a long time and haven't strayed from the concept in over twenty years.

I will finish with a piece of design trivia: you may think the red Trackpoint cap is one of the most recognizable design points for the ThinkPad but early ThinkPad’s offered black TrackCapsas an accessory. Maybe the Red TrackPoint was to flashy for us at that time. Today, we're all red.

Tomoyuki Takahashi

Okay, we get the message. You've voted and the results are overwhelmingly in favor of the classic anti-glare screen. This is a landslide.

Here's how we view the market and usage scenario for the glossy screen models now only available on our Lenovo 3000 line: first, nearly every manufacturer supports a glossy screen. This technology is, in our opinion, aimed at the consumer who seeks a degree of sharpness in their display for viewing movies, working with images, and who is attracted to a sharp and shiny design experience.

As the comments point out, there are some downsides to glossy — light reflectivity, propensity for displaying fingerprints. Anti-glare is popular with business users for a variety of reasons, but I think those reasons can be summed up as an intolerance for reflections in work environments where overhead lighting is the norm.

Stay tuned for a new poll this week.

David Hill

In addition to computers my team also works on the design of many computer-related accessories. These are often little design jewels that allow designers to stretch their imaginations in areas they don't normally get to focus on. One such design is the newly introduced USB WebCam.

The camera is very compact, includes two beam-forming microphones with noise reduction which separate your voice from ambient background noises. In addition, software cancels unwanted echoes during your calls so your voice comes through naturally on the receiving end. You probably won't even need a headset!

It also sports a unique spring clip attachment method we invented that lets you attach it easily and securely to a thin notebook display or a traditional flat-panel monitor. It will also stand alone on a desk.

But my favorite feature is the sliding lens cover design. This feature does more than protect the lens, it connects in a design sense to the famous Minox spy camera from the 1960's. Every time I use it I feel a bit like James Bond. It also gives you the added visual fail safe for knowing when the camera is transmitting or not. I like to call this "pajama mode".

You can check out the details here. 

David Hill   

Gizmodo's Brian Lam snaps pics at the DEMO conference – Valleywag

We noted earlier from ForbesOnTech that ThinkPads were the preferred platform for demonstrating new products at DEMO 2006 last week. One poor presenter fumbled and dropped his ThinkPad.

"Gizmodo editor Brian Lam is camping out today at the Web 2.0-heavy DEMO Conference, an orgy of product demos, promising his readers some liveblog action. So far there're no DEMO details on Gizmodo, but BLam keeps e-mailing me potshots. The above is the dude fumbling his Thinkpad while demoing software product MojoPac.

"BLam says: they dropped it, and they guy almost had a heart attack. … Looking back, seems like an elaborate setup. Old thinkpad sacrificed for product promotion?

There are always technology trends to consider when designing a notebook computer.  One trend that has raised some interesting discussion among designers and customers is the various surface treatments for a notebook's display.

The two treatments that create the most difference are generically referred to as anti-glare and "glossy."  With an anti-glare treatment, the display surface is roughened (on a microscopic scale) to diffuse ambient light reflections that may appear on the display surface. 

With a "glossy" treatment, the display surface is very smooth, which allows the display image to pass through with minimal diffusion.  We think there are pros and cons to each and that the primary usage case is the deciding factor.  We are interested in what you think, so please let us know with this week's design poll.

All things considered, which surface treatment would you prefer for your display?Anti-glare (matte) or "Glossy?" At present Lenovo offers the glossy option only on its Lenovo 3000 series of notebooks. ThinkPads remain "anti-glare" across the line.

David Hill