How to make the PC beautiful
The race to design the iPod of the personal computer market is well and truly under way.
When Microsoft started looking for ways to inspire demand for its Media Center PC software, it decided that it needed a bit of sexy hardware to go with it.
After all, the software was designed to let consumers watch TV, listen to music, play games and surf the internet in their living rooms. Few people would want to slide an ugly PC on to their bookshelves, much less plonk one down next to their television.
So the software giant turned to a small San Francisco company called One & Co and asked it to develop a series of state-of-the-art reference works that would inspire computer manufacturers to transform clunky office computers into sleek, powerful entertainment devices built for the living room.
That project yielded some radical PC concepts, and although these are unlikely to end up in anyone's living-room any time soon, they serve to highlight how technology companies are hoping that specialists in industrial design can transform their products into fashion statements to gain competitive advantage.
Apple Computer's iconic iPod digital music player has become the benchmark for design in the technology business. “Technology companies are realising that design is a powerful competitive advantage,” says Sam Lucente, the top brand designer at Hewlett-Packard, the computer manufacturer. “There is a sense of urgency around this.”
There are two reasons for the growing interest in the design of computer products: one is the standardisation of the underlying technology; the other is the intensifying competition from low-cost manufacturers, primarily in China and India.This has coincided with a surge in growth in the consumer electronics market, which is worth $114bn (￡60.3bn) in the US alone.
As a result, established technology groups not only PC makers but also manufacturers of cellphones and big-screen televisions are being forced to make a critical choice: either play a cut-throat game at the low-cost end of the market or try to stand out with innovative consumer designs that drive higher margins.
Designers are striving to innovate on two key fronts: the hardware that gives products their cachet and the software that makes those products easy to use.
The most successful consumer technology groups are those that have been able to combine crisp designs with intuitive user interfaces. Apple's iPod set a new standard for minimalist design and ease of use, and it has evoked the kind of strong emotional reaction from consumers that marketers dream of: some of whom have been heard to declare that the music player has “changed their life”.
“I can't tell you how many clients say: ‘I want this to be the iPod of its category',” says Jonah Becker, a partner at One & Co. “No one is dying to find out what the next Dell computer is going to look like.”
Stephen Baker, analyst at NPD Group, says the iPod's success underscores the fact that most other technologies are still far too clunky and complex for the average consumer. Most manufacturers fail to heed the so-called 80/20 rule, he says. This holds that 80 per cent of consumers use no more than 20 per cent of the features on a device. By contrast, the iPod gives consumers all that they want in a to-die-for package.
Bill Moggridge, co-founder of Ideo, a US industrial design group, says that, until now, technology companies have not needed to worry about the design of their products. This is because the early users of advanced technology tend to be ready to cope with untested products and office workers have had little option but to use sometimes unwieldy computer systems while doing their job. But technology groups wanting to increase their share of the profitable consumer market are now finding that high-street buyers are less tolerant of cumbersome products. Cellphone makers and video-game manufacturers have enjoyed a fair degree of success in the consumer market but the computer industry still has a long way to go if it is to develop an intuitive entertainment PC. “PCs are kind to chips and cruel to people,” says Mr Moggridge. “Consumers don't want the computer to get in the way, they just want it to do what they want.” In other words, they do not want to waste time booting up their computers, downloading files and clicking their way through scores of step-driven processes.
Mr Moggridge points out that video games have been a big consumer hit because they incorporate so-called “learning loops” into their software the software gives players little morsels to digest before introducing them to more difficult challenges.
These loops are designed to give players regular dollops of gratification while drawing them deeper into more challenging levels of the game. Mr Moggridge believes that any advanced consumer technology of the future will need to use similar strategies for guiding people. But if learning loops are a path to the future, the rush to match design with innovative technologies is today creating some unusual bedfellows. In a move that marries technology and fashion, Philips Electronics has teamed up with Nike to launch a line of branded music players aimed at the huge customer base of the sportswear giant. Meanwhile, Flextronics, a Singaporean electronics contract manufacturer, last year bought frog design, one of the world's most highly regarded industrial design businesses. The acquisition raised eyebrows because while Flextronics has long designed products for big-name manufacturers Dell, Motorola, IBM it had focused on designing the electronic components inside the products. The company hopes that frog will help it design products that stand out from the crowd.
HP, for its part, has launched a push to shed its image as the grey old lady of Silicon Valley. The company hired Mr Lucente two years ago because of his experience as a designer of consumer products at Netscape Communications, the internet browser group, and his role on the team that designed IBM's popular ThinkPad notebook PC.
Mr Lucente promises a whole new look for HP's consumer products within the next year or two. But HP's progress will be tied to a large degree to the success of the Longhorn operating system being prepared for launch which is hoped to be next year by Microsoft, its long-time partner. Sony is another giant in the race to design consumer-friendly products, although sceptics say it will have to overcome its past record for failing to deliver the software that matches the quality of its hardware.
Meanwhile, South Korea's Samsung, which has employed Ideo in the past as part of a push to hone its hardware design skills, is focused on replicating that achievement in software.
Which companies emerge as leading designers of products that look good and work well is not yet clear. Consumers have already shown that they can quickly become attached to a tiny portable electronic device. How lasting that bond will be is another matter. As Ideo's Mr Moggridge puts it: “It's all up for grabs.”
把电脑设计得更抢眼
个人电脑市场的设计竞争愈演愈烈。
当微软(Microsoft)开始设法刺激媒体中心PC软件的需求时，它发现需要略带性感的硬件与其相配。
毕竟，设计软件是为了让消费者在自己的客厅看电视、听音乐、玩游戏和网上冲浪。很少会有人会将一台难看的电脑放在书架上，更不会把这个笨重的东西放在电视机旁。
因此，软件巨擎微软找到一家位于旧金山的小公司One&Co，要求它开发一系列具有最高技术水平的参考作品。它们将赋予计算机制造商灵感，把沉闷的办公室电脑改造成客厅内的功能强大的时尚娱乐设备。
这个项目产生了一些激进的电脑设计理念。虽然它们最终不会很快出现在人们的客厅，但这些理念有力地证明了科技公司是多么希望工业设计专家能把产品变成时尚，从而赢得竞争优势。
苹果电脑(Apple Computer)的iPod数字音乐播放器独树一帜，已成为科技界设计的参照标准。“现在，科技公司意识到，设计是一种强大的竞争优势，”计算机制造商惠普(Hewlett-Packard)的首席品牌设计师萨姆?卢森(Sam Lucente)说，“他们在这方面有种紧迫感。”
对电脑产品设计的兴趣与日俱增有两个原因：一是基础技术的标准化；二是来自低成本制造商的竞争日渐白热化，这种竞争主要来自中国和印度。这与消费电子市场中突然出现的大幅增长不谋而合，仅美国市场就价值1140亿美元(6030亿英镑)。
于是，包括电脑制造商和手机、大屏幕电视生产商在内的资深科技集团公司正在被迫做一个重大的决定：要么在低成本市场进行一场你死我活的游戏，要么设法依靠创新的消费电子设计一鸣惊人，创造更高的利润率。
现在，设计师们正努力在两大主要领域内进行创新：一是赋予产品其独特风格的硬件；二是使这些产品便于使用的软件。
在消费电子科技集团中，最成功的要属那些能将创新的设计和直观的用户界面合二为一的公司。苹果的iPod为极简抽象主义的设计和便捷的使用方法树立了一种全新的标准，并使消费者为之动情，而这种反应正是市场营销人士所梦寐以求的。有人曾听他们中的一些人说，音乐播放器“改变了他们的生活”。
“我不记得有多少客户曾说过，‘我希望这能成为同类产品中的iPod，”One&Co的合伙人之一乔纳?贝克(Jonah Becker)说，“没有人渴望知道下一代戴尔(Dell)电脑会是什么样子。”
NPD集团的分析师斯蒂芬?贝克(Stephen Baker)说，iPod的成功证明了一个事实，即对于普通消费者来说，其它大部分技术仍然太沉闷太复杂了。大多数制造商没有注意到80/20法则，他说。80/20法则认为，80%的消费者只使用一台设备上20%的功能。相比之下，iPod把消费者想要的一切都融进一个诱人的的产品。
美国工业设计集团Ideo的共同创始人比尔?莫格里几(Bill Moggridge)说，过去，科技公司一直不必担心产品的设计。这是因为先进技术的早期用户往往已准备好应对未经试验的产品，而上班族别无选择，只好使用一些难以操作的电脑系统。但现在，想要在赢利的消费市场中扩大份额的科技集团发现，商业街上的买主对于笨重的电子产品的容忍减少了。手机和电子游戏生产商在消费市场中享有相当程度的成功，但若要开发一种直观的娱乐型电脑，电脑业仍有很长的路要走。“电脑对芯片很仁慈，但对人很残忍，” 莫格里几先生说，“消费者不希望电脑碍事，他们只希望电脑做他们想要做的事情。”换言之，他们不想在启动自己的计算机、下载文件以及冗长的程序步骤上浪费时间。
莫格里几先生指出，电子游戏是消费市场的一大成功，因为它们将所谓的“学习循环”融入到软件中。在向玩家介绍更难的挑战前，软件需要他们消化的东西很少。
设计这些循环是为了一边吸引玩家进入游戏中更富挑战性的高级别，一边不断给他们一点满足感。莫格里几先生认为，今后，所有先进的消费电子技术将必须采用类似指导人们的策略。但是，如果说学习循环是通向未来的大道，那么今天我们急需创造一些能将设计与创新的技术完美结合的与众不同的合作伙伴。菲利浦电子(Philips Electronics)与耐克(Nike)携手推出了一个系列的品牌音乐播放器，将技术和时尚揉合在一起，而且瞄准的是这个运动服巨头庞大的消费者基数。同时，新加坡电子产品承包制造商伟创力(Flextronics)，于去年收购了全球最负盛名的工业设计公司青蛙设计(Frog Design)。这次收购令人惊讶，因为虽然伟创力长期为戴尔、摩托罗拉(Motorola)和IBM等知名制造商设计产品，但它一直专注于产品内部的电子元件的设计。伟创力希望青蛙公司帮助它设计出独树一帜的产品。
惠普为摆脱其硅谷老太太的形象，也急忙推出了自己的举措。两年前，惠普聘用了卢森先生，原因是他曾在网景通讯(Netscape Communications)担任消费电子产品设计师，还参与设计了IBM很受欢迎的ThinkPad笔记本电脑。
卢森先生承诺将在明年或后年为惠普消费电子产品改头换面。但在很大程度上，惠普的发展将与Longhorn操作系统的成功息息相关。Longhorm正处于上市前的准备阶段，将由惠普的长期合作伙伴微软于明年推出。电子业另一大巨头索尼(Sony)也加入了设计界面友好的电子产品的大战中。然而，持怀疑态度的人说，索尼必须改变过去无法生产出与其硬件质量相配软件的记录。
同时，曾聘请Ideo完善其硬件设计技术的韩国三星（Samsung）现正专心致志地在软件上重现辉煌。
事实已经证明，消费者对便携式迷你电子设备很快会着迷。哪个公司将设计出外表和性能兼具的产品尚不明确。但正如Ideo的莫格里几先生所说的，“大家都有份。”至于这种喜欢将维持多久则是另外一回事。
