How a focus on design is changing the personal computer.
How a focus on design is changing the personal computer.
How is HP working to innovate and stay ahead in a flagging PC market?
As more and more millennials enter the workforce, design has become an increasingly important consideration. These workers often say that design is a key factor in choosing a laptop and PC, which is why industrial design now goes hand-in-hand with hardware selection. In addition, we’re bringing in lessons from various fields like automotive and interior design to help create more compelling products.
We’ve also noticed growing trends in entertainment and audio, which is why we released the Pavilion Wave, a compact desktop PC that looks just like a speaker. The idea was to place the audio experience front and center and create an aesthetically pleasing PC that did not sacrifice functionality. Similarly, we made the Elite Slice modular PC to help facilitate seamless collaboration. The latter supports multiple stackable modules, one of which enables Skype for Business at the touch of a button, so it’s really targeted at that particular use case.
Is it safe to say that specific use cases and scenarios are now dictating what sort of devices get made?
Yes, indeed. Ultimately, the goal is to help customers navigate different use cases more effectively. Instead of simply designing machines with faster processors and more RAM, we’re now seeing a shift toward a model where specific use cases – for instance professionals on-the-go that demand premium thin and light laptops – are defining the products we create.
This also means that product design has become a lot more focused. While the general consensus is that consumers want thin and light notebooks, you don’t quite see a proliferation of featherweight notebooks across the entire price spectrum. Instead, these notebooks are mostly concentrated in the mid to high end of the market, because that’s where demand is highest.
How should brands continue to attract and retain consumers’ interest in new computing devices?
In order to continue to grow, it’s important to not just engineer for the sake of engineering. You want to find the intersection between performance and design, while also bearing in mind what the machine is going to be used for, and more pertinently, what consumers want from it.
Extensive research should also be carried out to identify pockets of growth and give form to just what consumers are demanding from their devices. Take for example the HP Elite Slice modular PC. I said before that it was designed with collaboration in mind because that was what research showed business users were doing very often.
Similarly, another of the modules is an audio module with a dualmicrophone array and 360-degree speaker tuned by Bang & Olufsen, a design decision motivated by figures that showed that employees spent an average of 700 hours a year on phone conferences.
“We’re bringing in lessons from automotive and interior design to help create more compelling products.”
Anneliese Olson, General Manager of Personal Systems, HP APJ.
MAKEUP BY ANGEL GWEE USING LANEIGE AND LOREAL HAIR PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY VERNON WONG ART DIRECTION KEN KOH.
