Australian Design Awards 2011

Description and Principal Function

The design for the new Inspiron laptops began with consumer insight based on research through which consumer needs, desires, and pain-points were explored and understood by the development team and resulted in a thoughtful, new design language implemented across the new laptop series. The Inspiron 15R in particular was designed for family needs and features thoughtful, innovative design elements such as the Switch lid covers, cable/connector layout, hinge design, speaker placement, and buttons/controls layout. The Inspiron 15R features a 15.6-inch widescreen HD display, 2nd generation Intel Core processors, and up to 13 hours of life with the optional 19-cell battery.

Optional, switchable display lids
Inspiron R Laptops feature the ability to personalize your Laptop with contemporary, original artwork replacement lids exclusively designed to reflect your personality. Customers choose from among 20+ optional lids through the interactive Design Studio website. To change a lid, just press the single button on the lid, slide and lift and you are ready to remove and replace the lid. With this design, the development team was able to move the ability to personalize the laptop from the initial manufacturing to aftermarket which helped reduce manufacturing and logistics complexity while providing customers with even more flexibility to personalize their laptop.

Cable/Connector layout
The design composition of the Inspiron 15R form factor is a result of many elements coming together, all beginning with customer input. The ability to personalize the lids—repeatedly, sound output quality, controls design, and how the laptop connects, all contributed to the overall design composition. In particular, the cable and connector layout was based on investigation and understanding of how families would use the laptop so the less moveable, and heavy cable connections and the security lock feature were place on the rear, USB ports on all sides, and media inputs on the thinner, forward sides for better accessibility.

Hinge-forward industrial design
The Inspiron R Laptops feature a hinge-forward design with the elegant barrel hinge details on the top of the base and behind the keyboard which keeps the hinges protected from damage and cleaner looking visually. Because the overall laptop design composition considered the cable layout concurrently, the hinge-forward design allowed for all of the larger cables to be placed on the rear without any interference from the opening hinges and lid. The hinge-forward design creates a smaller footprint for the laptop which makes it more stable and much easier to open in constrained spaces like small café tables or airplanes.

Speaker design and placement
The Inspiron 15R form factor is a complete composition, top and bottom. The bottom surface and speakers of the laptop received the same degree of design attention as the rest of the laptop. In particular, the bottom surface towards the front of the laptop gently sweeps upward, in an “uplift” creating a thinner side profile and an ideal location for the two speakers. Customer input revealed how important good a sound experience was for a family laptop so the speakers were positioned to reflect and distribute the sound off of the user’s surface to create a more enhanced sound experience.

Buttons and controls layout
The Inspiron 15R button design and controls layout benefited from considerable customer research and feedback. From the simple, one-button control for easy lid removal to the re-conceived 3 button control center, the buttons and controls were essentially designed by the customers to meet their needs and give them more control of the PC functions. The new 3-button control center features, Windows Mobility Center, Dell Support Center, and Display on/off buttons. These are high-level function buttons that provide quick access to many sub-level functions such as the brightness, volume, battery status, wireless network, etc. controls via the Windows Mobility Center button.

Pros
It allows the user to customize their own laptop, and make it only the user's, so everyone can have their own customized laptop and make them stand out and express what kind of person they are from the way they customized their laptop

Cons
I am concern that the customized piece might be easy to break and how to install can be a new thing to learn, and it required pressure to install and if the user apply too much pressure, it can break the piece. Also, how to store the pieces might not be space efficient.

Improvements
I would improve the design by making the cover an LED screen, so that the user can customize their laptop without having to take the cover off.

Project 2: Six Can Beverage Pack

Brief: C – Six Can Beverage Pack
Product Name: IMPACT
Product: 250mL 6 can energy drink pack
Theme: Strong, tough, prison break
Special Feature: Opens from front by breaking open the bars

Brief C challenge is to design a six can beverage pack, in which I choose to design a beverage pack for 250mL 6 can energy drink. Researches were done on currently existing packages, including energy drinks and alcoholic drinks. The researches have shown the current 6 pack packages focus on the graphics design instead of the package and the way they are putted together. The current design of energy drinks are mostly in box shapes with all sides covered to maximize the graphics that can be placed on the package, or a sheet of cardboard folded to form a top, front, bottom, and back cover, which can minimize the amount of material required for the package.

The design of “IMPACT” energy drinks focus on the package as well as the graphics, the target audiences of “IMPACT” are teenagers to mature male who admire strong and toughness, having a behind bars feeling to it. Which is the reason the design of the package are based according to prisons.

The design “IMPACT” package is a locked up cell with only one side reveling what is inside, which is the same principle of prison, having 3 sides of walls, and one side with bars locking up the prisoners. Therefore the only way user can gain access to the energy drink is to break open the bars, which is what the design purposely done for. The users are required to rip open the bars to get the drinks.

As for the graphics of the design, it uses the very basic color of black and white, and it does not consist of many unnecessary graphics, which fits the environment of a prison where there isn’t much color and entertainment to it. However, the graphics used are very explosive, almost giving the users a big bang strong feeling.

The cost of manufacturing this package will be the same as any other 6 pack packaging, because the surface area required for the package is the box design of other energy drinks, and since they are rectangular shape, they can be stacked together, which can be easily transported.

Project 1: Sheet Material

Sheet Material: Clear acrylic sheets
Target Market: Modern family
Object: Fruit Bowl
Name of product: Skyfruit Bowl
Cost of manufacturing: $ 28.95

The concept of the fruit bowl came from an ordinary “Powerade” bottle where it got handgrip for its user to handle the bottle, it was a very comfortable design, which I looked at more bottles with these kind of design. And I was looking at the design of the bottles and start converting it as the basic idea of the design, which I realize the shape of the handgrip is similar to a skeleton shape, and skeleton shape has become my direction of the design.

After knowing that is the direction of my design, I did further research on skeleton styles and cultures, and by researching, most of the skeleton style culture came from Ancient Egypt, and the first inspiration came from mummy, it gave me the idea of using strips to go around an objects. One of the Egyptian objects I researched is the fireplace bowl, it used strips of metal to hold the fire together, the negative spaces it created allows the lights from fire go through, increasing the brightness of it, which I would like the idea of using negative spaces to my design, as it can visually look lighter.

As I research more on Egyptian container styles, the torch designs really caught my attention, and I shifted my focus of research from Egyptian to different cultures of torch, and came up with the ancient Roman time, which I also found the torches are designed to have negative spaces to create greater brightness. So I design concept sketches based on the ideas from the researches, and designed a series of rings as the container base.

Now coming to joining the rings together, I did further researches on ancient containers, which I particularly focused on the Chinese cultures, because I got attracted by the design and the strong feeling the Chinese design has given me. Most of the designs have the elements of Chinese dragon, and I would like to add it to my design. And I realize the dragon might be too aggressive for a family, so I have smoothen my design and came out with the final product.