Design Matters

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

I first discovered this design several years ago while visiting Richard Sapper’s design studio in Milan. After a long day of work Sapper suggested we should celebrate with a toast of his favorite whiskey. His preference by the way is Laphroaig single malt Scotch, or as I like to call it liquid smoke. Amazing taste. He brought out a bottle and poured it into beautiful pure cylindrical glasses that were of a very unusual slender proportion with a extremely thin and elegant wall thickness. The glasses measure 50mm in diameter and just under 160mm tall. For reference a golf ball measures 42.67mm in diameter. I asked Sapper where you can buy glasses like this as they were truly special and appealing to me.  He responded that they are glasses used only in Cologne Germany to serve Kölsch beer. He loves the design not only for it’s form, but also it’s value. A 12 count case costs about a dollar a glass!

Here is a VERY detailed excerpt from the Wikipedia regarding Kölsch beer and the unique glass:

Kölsch is a local beer specialty, brewed in Cologne , Germany. It is a clear beer with a bright straw yellow hue, and it has a prominent, but not extreme, hoppiness. It is less bitter than the standard German lager beer, Pils. Furthermore, Kölsch is a top-fermented beer (an ale), meaning that it is fermented at 15 to 20°C (60 to 68°F) and the yeast tends to collect at the top, as opposed to bottom fermented beer (a lager) fermented at much colder temperatures. Kölsch yeast is often confused with a bottom-fermenting lager yeast because of its relatively low fermentation temperature. Although Kölsch ferments colder than most ales, its yeast is definitely an ale strain.

Kölsch should be served at cellar temperature (about 10°C/50°F, not near freezing). It is usually served in long, thin, cylindrical 0.2 litre glasses. This glass is known as a Stange (pole), but is often derisively called a Reagenzglas (test tube), or Fingerhut (thimble). Recently though, many bars have moved to satisfy their more thirsty customers by offering larger, less traditional glasses (0.3 l or 0.4 l) of the same shape, but connoisseurs would even drink it from smaller (0.1 l) glasses, called “Stößche” (Cologne dialect noun for a German verb “stürzen” = to gulp), as the taste of Kölsch, which has no carbonic acid added, is at its best when fresh on draught. Since 1936 Kölsch has also been available in bottled form.

Since I had no immediate plan to visit Cologne, I searched the web for a online source. I was amazed to find a tool supplier in Canada that offers a dozen for an astonishing $12.50. I was prepared to pay far more than that for such a beautiful design.  I immediately ordered a dozen for use at the house. Anything you drink from them, beer, wine, whiskey, orange juice, or even water just seems more special. Now I just need to find a source to buy one of those clever trays to carry them with. I think they call them a Kölschkranz. Prost!

David Hill

It seems like everywhere you look now there are notebook computers available in a myriad of bright colors and decorative patterns. Kind of reminds me of the olden days when even stodgy IBM sold mainframes and typewriters in colors. I used to own a bright red Selectric before it got lost in a move. IBM stopped offering the color option because of the enormous business complexity it drove. The current color movement seems to be primarily focused at consumer notebooks. Will the trend overtake business computing?

Color can be something that is strongly connected to a brand. Imagine a John Deere tractor coming out in a color other than green? What if the Pink Panther wasn’t, or if Batman wore a white suit? Some brands have celebrated color choice as a brand attribute offering new colors all the time. Apple continues to offer a rainbow of colorful iPod choices. Even Levi’s offers blue jeans that aren’t blue. Shame on them?

ThinkPad has never really departed from classic black, with the exception of a short run special edition titanium cover on the Z series. For the record, it was real titanium, not paint. Over the years we have made matte black, gloss black, rubberized black, metallic black and even titanium sparkled black. We should get a healthy discount on black plastic and paint based on purchase volumes and long term contractual commitments. I’m sure you have all seen that a company called ColorWare will gladly take your precious ThinkPad from you, bathe it in your favorite color, and return it to you for about 400 dollars. When returned they look a lot like this.

I’m curious what Design Matters readers think about ThinkPad coming in colors other than black. Should we join the color trend or stay the course? I’ve created a poll to gather your views.

David Hill

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 

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

If you thought the first ThinkPad W700 was a performance beast, wait until you see the newest version. We just announced an even more extreme model with an industry leading integrated second display.  Because many workstation users typically work with two monitors, Lenovo designed the ThinkPad W700ds mobile workstation with two screens to accommodate users work habits and to eliminate the compromise of having only one display when operating in a mobile environment. Once you have gotten used to a dual display environment it’s very hard to go back. In case you are wondering ds stands for dual screen. Clever aren’t we.

Research has shown that extra screen real-estate with multiple monitors helps maximize user productivity versus traditional single display solutions. Measuring almost 40 percent of the 17-inch primary screen, the 10.6-inch second screen gives users extra screen real-estate in a portable solution. The secondary display neatly slides behind the primary screen when not in use. You can watch a video clip of the action here.

It’s not just about having two displays, however, it’s also about proper ergonomics. We made certain that the display slide mechanism also allowed the screen to angle toward the user at varying degrees. Can you imagine reading a two page newspaper spread if it had to be viewed totally flat? The secondary screen is adjustable within 30 degrees. This range allows the user to comfortably adjust the screen to fall within their cone of vision. Setting it is as easy as adjusting the rear view mirror on my car.

There are many obvious productivity enhancing uses for multiple displays for this class of machine. I won’t even attempt to list them. Oddly enough there also seem to be unintentional benefits that are often discovered by people after the fact. My favorite one builds on the rear view mirror analogy. If you activate the onboard camera and move the video image to the second screen it can cleverly be used to see if anyone is lurking behind you. The ThinkPad rear view mirror option is born. Now you can stop worrying about being caught surfing the web,  e-mailing friends, or playing solitaire while the boss quietly watches. That never happens to you, or does it?

David Hill

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.

David Hill