For those of you who don’t already know, I decided to join the world of Twitter. This new tool will give me a chance to share my brief thoughts on design to a even broader audience. So far I’ve written 4 design related tweets. If you are so inclined you can follow me here.
I recently saw a presentation by designer, brand strategist, and author Marc Gobe of Emotional Branding notoriety where he claimed the true test of a powerful brand is whether or not it has a brand promise that is “twitterable”. It ’s an interesting point of view that certainly caught my interest. Twitter, the free social networking and micro-blog service, continues to grow in popularity. Their website now ranks within the top 50 most popular in the world. Twitter limits your thoughts, or tweets as they are called, to a total of 140 characters including spaces. The self imposed 140 character limit on message length was initially set for compatibility with SMS messaging. Now it has brought to the web the kind of shorthand notation and slang historically associated with text messaging. Using so few characters to capture a brand promise can be easy for some, and much more challenging for others. Here are a couple of brand promise statements I like that fit within the 140 character Twitter constraint.
Expect more. Pay less.
You’ve tasted the most popular German beer in America. Now taste the German beer that’s the most popular in Germany.
The Target example at 22 characters is incredible in terms of how succinct and powerful it is. Their entire brand identity is one I admire. Dramatic use of color, simple and clear typography, beautiful logo, and a consistant contemporary theme. I’ve often been asked why Lenovo doesn’t have a logo as clear or as dramatic. My standard answer is if you want to change the name of the company to a recognizable object, it would be easy. What does a Lenovo look like? I know what a banana looks like. The Becks beer example at 116 characters is obviously longer, but it has to convey a much more complex positioning and promise of value. I think it does a pretty good job. It makes me want to try one.
I think this is an interesting exercise for those involved with brand managment and design. So here is the challenge. If you were going to write a 140 character twitter that described the brand promise for the entire portfolio of Think branded offerings what would it say? What Tweet would neatly sew together ThinkPad, ThinkCentre, ThinkVision, ThinkServer, ThinkStation, and ThinkVantage technologies brand positioning? Does “Ultimate Business Tools” at 23 characters cut the mustard?
I’ve always been told that a brand promise must be unique, compelling, and believeable. Now it must be “twitterable”. I would love to know the views of my readers. Are you up for the challenge?
David Hill
Guest blogger, Aaron Stewart, Human Factors Engineer, speaks out about SimpleTap. I want to thank him for sharing his thoughts with the Design Matters audience. David
When I meet someone new, I often wonder what they think when I tell them I am a human factors engineer. Some seemingly wonder what exactly it is that I factor about humans. Others just say “that sounds cool.” Most get the basic gist when I reference usability or ergonomics. My stock answer as a member of the User Experience and Design team at Lenovo is that I help make our products easy and comfortable to use. That is really just the surface of what we do, but it works in quick conversation.
At its core, human factors work is about scrutinizing the interaction between people and whatever is around them (e.g. machines, signage, furniture). Classically speaking, the focus is on ensuring a person efficiently and safely accomplishes a task. Is the order of operations clear? How long does the task take? What are the mental and physical risks? It is rationale, analytical stuff. You might be asking who invited Spock to the party. Well, human factors engineers often do. In fact, the term “nerd out” is now just part of our occupational lingo.
ThinkPad strikes a chord with many as it seems purpose-built. After all, a notebook computer is inherently a tool that we use for a variety of tasks. And where there are products built for tasks, there are human factors to resolve. We analyze…ok, we obsess over the impacts that aspects like control location and software interface design have on productivity and comfort. In some respects, the more the ThinkPad is unobtrusive in accomplishing those tasks, the more our team has done our job. In the process of serving as means to an end, however, a tool just might create an enjoyable experience. In fact, I’ll argue it should. Whether it is noticing the familiar feel of your trusty keyboard or using a touchscreen gesture to pan through a map, you just might catch yourself feeling some emotion toward your ThinkPad. It’s OK, we won’t tell anyone.
David recently blogged about a new software application for ThinkPad called SimpleTap. Optimized for touch input, it offers quick access to a customizable control center for your ThinkPad (link to previous post). Sounds task-oriented and useful, right? Spock was certainly consulted during initial brainstorming. SimpleTap needed to effectively serve a need, but we had other intentions with the design. In using SimpleTap, you’ll notice some elements of playfulness. The tiles within SimpleTap can be flicked around the screen after which they may bounce off of one another or the edge of the display. Why? Building healthy tension with an analytical view, sometimes the better question is why not? Your scatted tiles can be quickly realigned with a handy alignment control. When clean up is easy, making a mess can be a good time. Tapping the tile for controlling display brightness opens a preview through SimpleTap to your display contents. You need to see the true effects of your adjustments, right? The manner in which the preview opens may playfully remind of you of something. One hint: think Saturday morning, that’s all folks. Finally, the tiles on-screen are customizable in number, function, position and color. We want you to be able to create your control center.
Designing good product interaction requires a perspective that is equal parts rationale and emotional. SimpleTap is an example of employing that approach. The User Experience and Design team vows to help deliver thoughtful and useful function. In using it, we hope you allow time to have some fun.
Aaron Stewart
Following up on my last blog about touch, today we introduced unique versions of the ThinkPad X200 tablet and the T400s notebook that include optional multitouch technology. People can now interact with their ThinkPad in a more personal way using this technology. It’s hard to get more personal than touch.
The highly mobile ThinkPad x200 tablet caters to people in sales, health care and education. Already supporting one finger touch, tablet users can now use two finger touch to perform a variety of gestures, inlcuding pinching, zooming, and tapping. You can also flick through documents, photos, and webpages with the touch of a finger. Adding these advanced and intuitive touch features seems so right to me.
The high performance ThinkPad T400s model serves professionals in engineering and design. These demanding users can now manipulate four fingers on the T400s screen not only to replace tradional cursor movements but to change the way they work. Four finger touch can be used to manipulate objects, move images with two hands, and even have another person touch the screen to collaborate simultaneously.
In order to exploit this new touch capability my team invented a unique application that we think will make your world both simpler and more entertaining. We call the application SimpleTap, I think the name says it all. This unique innovation gives people a quick and easy-to-use touch interface for controlling everyday product functions. Using a simple two finger double tap anywhere on the screen lauches SimpleTap. It appears as a smoky transulcent layer over your currently diplayed environment. Sitting within this new layer is an array of square icons, or tiles as we call them, for controlling things like; mute speakers, adjust volume level, mute microphone, invoke camera privacy, show camera preview, lock my desktop, suspend my system, select wireless radios, adjust brightness, and turn on or off my ThinkLight. Sounds like a lot, but it really quite simple. Tapping a tile either toggles the status directly, as in mute/un-mute, or it transforms into a new control such as a touch enabled slider for volume.
One of the sources of inspiration for the SimpleTap interface was the classic fifteen puzzle . Originally introduced in 1880, the fifteen puzzle is often described as the ultimate brain teaser, or the numerical nightmare. Don’t worry, we left out the brain teaser and numerical nightmare parts. What we capitalized on was how the tiles nest in a gridded array and can be positioned or slid with the touch of a finger to your prefered location. It’s kind of like the puzzle without the constraints.
We also wanted people to be able to customize SimpleTap content to more closely suit their individual needs. A handy feature we included allows the user to create custom tiles for launching web pages, or quickly getting to a special file or presentation. The tiles can also be ordered or grouped by dragging them to your desired location. If you’re bored, the tiles can entertainingly be flicked around the screen. Work just became fun.
Once you are finished adjusting your machine settings just tap anywhere on the screen and the SimpleTap layer instantly disappears. This allows the user to get in and get out quickly without having to deal with elaborate menu structures. Using these controls as an alternative to traditional buttons seems like a natural when you are already within a touch application. Why continuously switch back and forth between touch and mechanical buttons?
For me touch is a natural. Children seem to get it, they learn to communicate with gestures before they can even speak. Pointing, and waving are some of the first to be used. I still remember my oldest son intently pointing to the ceiling as he spoke his first real word ” light”. Why not make using a computer this simple or emotionally engaging?
David Hill
Touch interfaces seem to be showing up on more and more products. ATM machines, elevators, GPS navigational devices, airplane seat mounted displays, gas pumps, airport check in kiosks, phones and even television news programming are exploiting this rapidly evolving interaction model. SNL’s Weekend Update couldn’t resist spoofing the use of giant screen multitouch interfaces during the 2008 election. Remember back in the late 70’s when SNL spoofed a newly introduced twin bladed razor by suggesting one with 3 blades? Now you can really shave with one that has 5. Although it’s easy to poke fun at some of the more gratuitous uses of touch, when done right it can be a very simple and useful way to interact with a device.
My first experience with a touch interface was in an elevator that was sporting some new fangled “buttons” that didn’t move. You just lightly touched the button area and your selection glowed with an eery orange frame. As I recall, they worked based on sensing body heat. Believe it or not they could even be activated by breathing heavily on them. Don’t ask me how I know that. Not too much of a game changer in the user experience department.
The first real “on screen” touch interface I remember using was an early 1980’s ATM machine. It would seem crude by todays standards with it’s green screen larger-than-life pixels, and crude typography; but it did work. There certainly weren’t any 3D rendered icons or complex menu structures to deal with. The user interface wasn’t much more sophisticated than the first arcade video game. If only you could have played pong using touch instead of those cumbersome knobs. It would have been much more entertaining.
Touch really got it’s start in public spaces. It’s only been within the last few years that we are purchasing mainstream end user personal devices that have very sophisticated touch interfaces. Many of them are very enjoyable to use. I just recently bought a wonderful GPS unit for my car that only has one button to turn it on or off. Even that button is carefully hidden from view while using it. I’m sure this was not done by accident. It is so simple and intuitive to use that I have yet to crack open the instruction manual. It’s still neatly wrapped in the cellophane. I honestly used the thing fresh out of the package to navigate from the store parking lot to a new distination. Kudos to the designers for sizing the icons perfectly for fingers, considering the user environment, and not cluttering the screen with a million “might as well include them” functions. Simple is the key to success.
With the emergence of touch on Windows 7 it will be fascinating to see how this technology impacts the personal computer. Watch this space carefully.
David Hill
Back in December of last year I posted a blog and related survey on Design Matters concerning our in market external ThinkPad keyboard. I’ve used one for years on my desk. The blog was very popular generating over 100 comments. The related survey probed on things like touchpad vs. TrackPoint use, palmrest depth, overall typing touch and feel, and the design of controls such as volume and mute. Over 800 respondants took the survey. Having this kind of user feedback to help steer future design directions is a gift. Collectively we learned a lot about peoples use patterns and favorite features.
Highlights of what we learned
Almost no interest in the touchpad.
Little interest in having a dedicated number pad. We’ve heard this one before.
Touch and feel should be equal to ThinkPad notebooks.
Buttons such as volume, mute, etc. should match the ThinkPad notebook experience.
Some interest in a wireless version, but far from unanimous.
Reduced price prefered. Imagine that.
We just announced an updated external ThinkPad keyboard that takes into account all of this feedback. The keyboard layout, touch and feel matches the T400s as close as humanly possible. This includes the updates to the now famous “supersized” escape and delete keys as well as the volume and mute buttons. We also removed the touchpad and dedicated numberpad. The keyboard is now spill resistant just like a ThinkPad and there is nice place to store excess cord. We made sure the feet that create inclination have a nice rubber coating so the keyboard won’t slide around on your desk. These details really matter. Collectively, the changes we made allowed us to reduce the price by 40$. Amazing!
Just like any ThinkPad branded product, we spent a lot of time tweaking and tuning everything on this keyboard. We made nearly a dozen models before it was given the green light to manufacture. The fidelity of the models range from simple fome core studies to highly accurate 3D models made from CAD data. We even designed the bottom to make sure it looked and worked exactly the way we wanted. I thought I would share an early sketch of the bottom side and how it finally ended up. Make sure you notice the 2 drain holes.
I really like this keyboard and how it matches my new T400s. The feel is fantastic. Thanks for all the feedback that helped us to design it. Who knows maybe we will eventually make a wireless version.
David Hill
The Lenovo IdeaPad U160 
The Lenovo IdeaPad V460 
The Lenovo IdeaCentre K320 
Lenovo Meet the Modder Dean Liou 