Design Matters

Trivia question: Where is Einstein’s brain today?

Sketching and diagraming are very important tools for the designer. This hasn’t changed for centuries. Cavemen drew pictures, Einstein drew formulas, designers draw everything you can imagine. There is a clever site where you can pretend to be Einstein at the board, totally hilarious. Drawing is a tool for both communication and problem solving. One of the traps that many designers today fall into is the desire to run to a computer to solve a design problem. Not so fast. Never under estimate the power of the traditional methods.  One of my favorites is the blackboard. When I was about 8 years old my dad put a good sized blackboard in the garage for my artistic endeavors and doodling early design project details for things like Cub Scout assignments. I followed his lead by screwing an even larger blackboard to the wall in my own garage for my sons to use. I bought it a the Mayo Clinic surplus equipment store for a whopping 8 dollars.  I ended up using it as much as they did. Some things never change I guess.

When I first started working at IBM back in the 80’s I had a huge blackboard in my office that was well over four feet wide and eight feet tall. It was a floor to ceiling statement of creativity. What a wonderful way to draw a refrigerator sized design concept. You could even draw it as though it were sitting directly on the ground. It was a great tool. Chalk may leave dust behind and perhaps gets your clothing a bit messy, but it never runs out of ink. Even if you couldn’t find chalk you could still draw in the  the residue of former sessions with your finger. Much of the mid- 90’s IBM AS/400 Advanced Series design conceptual work was actually done on that very blackboard. There is just something about an old school blackboard that still gets my creative juices going.

Would Einstein have liked this?

Okay, white boards have their place too. We have several huge ones that allow us to brainstorm our thoughts and project design photos or drawings at the same time. Remember those electronic white boards that captured what you created and printed it out for you as a memento? They didn’t quite catch on in my world.  One true benefit of the basic whiteboard is the ability to draw over the projected image. Not so easy with a blackboard. This technique allows me or my team to envision design revisions as though you were working on a giant drafting table.

There is no such thing as too large of a drawing surface

As useful as white boards are, they still frustrate me. The ghostly image from the last meeting seems to hover on the board like a cloud of blue haze that refuses to die. Someone always steals the nasty smelling eraser which in turn demands that you rub the board clean with your handkerchief, finger, or hand. I hate having rainbow colored hands for the rest of the day. The markers also seem to always be the wrong color for what I want to draw.  When using ink or pencils I like to draw with black. Color has a place,  but not just color for the sake of color. For me it should have meaning in a sketch or diagram. If the markers aren’t missing they are squeaky dry, or totally empty. The empties annoyingly never seem to quite make it into the trash can. Do you throw the chalk away when it’s used up?  Think about it. The ultimate white board crime is when someone writes on it with a permanant marker. Game over.

I thought it would be interesting to poll Design Matters readers as to their own preference.

ThinkCentre A70z with chrome wire form stand

It’s been a while since we got to design and introduce an all-in-one computer targeted at the business user. Lately we have been designing primarily towers and pancakes of various sizes. My team pioneered this category way back in the year 1999 with the watershed design of the NetVista X40.  The head turning design was done in close collaboration with our design guru Richard Sapper. It was a great experience for all involved. The trim flat panel based X40 was a serious counter punch to the overtly pudgy and candy colored CRT based offering introduced by a “fruit” company. Amazing how they have changed their design approach since then.  One reviewer humorously mentioned that the design we created looked as though it could beat up the “pudgy one”  after school and steal their lunch money. In 2001 we significantly updated the design of the X40. You can watch a short video we shot that highlights the design of the X41 on YouTube. The hair styles may look a bit dated but the computer doesn’t. It was a dramatic improvement not only in terms of overall appearance, but also ergonomic flexibility, serviceability, configurability, and system performance. Domus magazine ran a major story on the X41 design which included the world’s first, and I think only, centerfold showcasing the design. Sadly, the category was abandoned by IBM due to a maniacal focus on belt tightening rather than product innovation. We already had a totally modular design in the works that would have shocked the industry. We still have the design model stored away for posterity, or possible future use.

Striking profile of the award winning NetVista X41 circa 2000

Years later, Lenovo picked up where IBM stumbled with the introduction of the first ThinkCentre all-in-one. The ThinkCentre A70z is a solid entry into the market with a starting price just below 500 dollars. I remember when a 19″ flat panel display cost far more than that. The design is rather simple in concept, we wanted it to look like a computer monitor. I don’t think people want to stare at a overly styled object tht competes all day with the information it displays. The design uses a now familar chamfer technique to make the product look slimmer. This is pretty easy to accomplish since the entire thing in reality is only 2.4″ thick at the thinnest point. We first started chamfering the sides of flat panel monitors and then the X40 series all-in-ones back in my old IBM days. Even the Shakers used chamfers on some of their furniture designs to emphasize thinness or precision. One of my favorites that uses a chamfer is the top of the New Lebanon Candle Stand from the mid 1800’s. Did the Shakers realize they were such masters of modern design? The clean, well-proportioned forms of Shaker furniture and artifacts were opposed to the material values of the superfluous ornamentation that prevailed in 19th-century industrialized culture. Sounds a lot like modernism to me.

I love the way it floats above the desk and keyboard on the optional articulated arm

Perhaps more important than form characteristics, the new all-in-one can be used in several different ways. For a computer targeted at simplicty of install and space savings this is highly important. The base offering uses a somewhat magical spring loaded chrome leg that effortlessly adjusts the display to different angles, it does not however provide any height adjustment. If you require height adjustment we offer a more traditional stand similar to the one many of the ThinkVision monitors already ship with. Within the design department, we often call it the pogo stick stand. For ultimate adjustability the entire unit can be arm mounted like the X41 using the VESA mounting holes. The same holes can also be used for a simple wall mount similar to that of a flat panel television. I really like the idea of a wall mounted computer for kiosk use. It’s hard to beat wall mounting for ultimate space savings.

We added a simple lifting handle for your convenience

The computer effortlessly tilts into position thanks to a magical spring

I like the reserved all business quality of the design we created and the innovative installation options it enables. It’s great so have a nice all-in-one back in the lineup. Business never looked better.

David Hill

Check out the Yamato Thinking blog for details on what Lenovo is doing with regard to the Fn/Ctrl debate. Thanks for all the feedback that has led us to take this action.

David Hill