ComputerWorld.com currently features a story “Sexy Machines — Yeah Baby!” that reveals that even when it comes to IT system design it isn’t just about the technology.
From Hewlett-Packard Co.’s BMW inspired designs to Sun Microsystems designs reminiscent of rockin’ stereo systems these manufactures know that even for enterprise-class IT system design you need to speak the “design language” of color and shape.
From the article:
You might even be surprised where the ideas for those LED-lit, honeycomb-vented, stylized aluminum boxes came from and just how much impact those slick designs have on your decision to fork out thousands of dollars on even the most expensive mainframes, servers and PCs. Even those flashy exterior lights on your hard disk drives have a measure of psychology behind them because manufacturers know certain bright colors evoke succinct messages in the mind of a techie.
George Daniels, the group manager at HP’s Enterprise Design and Usability Center, learned just how important design language can be when, not long ago, he chose to design a blue universal latch hood for a server line. The color blue erroneously screamed to corporate IT workers “turn this off before opening” even though the cover had nothing to do with the operation of the machine. After receiving user complaints from IT admins who’d been shutting down servers to open the hood, Daniels and his team of eight engineers quickly changed the color to HP’s standard port (purple), which tells a user, “I’m hot-swappable.” The example shows how critical computer design, right down to the color, is in providing IT workers visual signals to do their jobs.
See a slide show of the latest designs and read the rest of the article…
