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Rejecting the familiar with Intel’s Digital Home Initiatives team

Since I moved to Arizona four years ago, I’ve been working tirelessly for the man, specifically designing web sites and other digital miscellanea. Tired of the same old song and dance, I set out to spend my summer working for as small a firm as possible, exclusively in print.

Its funny how often I am reminded; life cannot be planned.

Intel, for those of you in the dark, is the world’s largest semiconductor company and employs nearly 90,000 worldwide. They invented the x86 series of microprocessors, or for the technophobes, the brains that power most personal computers.

With well over 90 percent of the market share in microprocessing, Intel is perfectly poised to foster and maintain innovation. How do you expand your operations when your product is already in more than 90 percent of all personal computers? You begin putting your product into things that it wouldn’t normally belong in: television sets, mobile internet devices, digital cameras and the like. As I discovered, this was precisely the plan.

I was hired, as an undergraduate intern, to work with the Digital Home Initiatives team on designing the graphical user interface for fourth-generation televisions. In simpler terms, Intel decided to put a microprocessor into a television, and they needed someone to work with the engineers to investigate and realize how the graphical user interface should look, feel and function.

To be entirely honest, I initially found the job description to be somewhat daunting. However, I accepted the challenge and began working two weeks after my first conversation with my new supervisor.

My first day in the office was as expected; I suppose most first days are. I networked, discovered, laughed and became oriented on two years of research that came before me. Knowing I would only be employed three months meant I did not need to spend much time decorating my work area, which I saw as a perk.

When I interviewed, my supervisor detailed that Intel had not previously hired an in house designer for this project. Naturally, I was interested to see how the initial prototypes were structured. I was somewhat surprised to find out they had commissioned Schematic, one of the teams responsible for the interfaces on Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report, to design the original interface. I won’t spend much time detailing that it is an incredible decision to hire a company that is known for pushing the envelope in terms of interface design to design your interface. But, it is worth a mention.

It is important to highlight the complexity that comes with putting a microprocessor into a television, specifically in terms of the interface. You see, in recent past, television has naturally become a very easy object to navigate. You sit, and you click. When you allow a casual browser to access the breadth of the world’s information, and the expectation is that you should be able to casually sit and click, a big problem surfaces.

The more I heard about this project, the more impressed I became with the way in which the Digital Home Initiatives team was approaching it. They quickly realized searching was going to be a big problem, so the first day, I was presented with several white papers, as well as working prototypes, detailing possible solutions.

An interesting method they are exploring is the use of three dimensionality to show, hide and navigate rich content. At first thought, this seems counter intuitive to the idea of the television being a sit-and-click experience. However, when you consider the human brain is naturally designed to explore and manipulate three dimensional space, a three dimensional interface seems highly plausible.

After nearly a week of reading white papers and experiencing prototypes, I was ready to begin. The first thing I did was create an experience diagram, mapping how a person would get from the beginning stages of the interface to the end game. This proved to be as successful in terms of helping me understand the project as it was for those around me.

At this point, I felt confident in my understanding of the project and was ready to build upon the work that had already been done. The next eight weeks were spent discussing theory, researching ideas and planning deliverables. The team was incredibly open to learning and discussing design theory. In fact, their library included several Edward Tufte and Pantone titles.

Working in a research-based atmosphere was particularly refreshing. Though they understood the importance of an informed decision, they also were open to any new ideas brought to the table. I can’t even begin to describe the incredible amount of energy that was circulating in my second month on the job. Hundreds of new ideas were raised, some successful, others not. I was even lucky enough to submit a patent on an invention. The last month of my employment brought a newly redesigned interface, a graphic style guide and several thousand written words describing design theory and idealist thoughts.

Of all the things I learned this summer, perhaps the most influential is that many people become inundated with the familiar. Sure, a clock tells time, but is time really presented in the best possible way? Design, in my opinion, is best served when the designer looks past the familiar to present the best solution to a known, or unknown, problem.

(I should probably note: I may be unable to detail answers to any specific questions about this project. Anything I have discussed has already been brought to light by Intel. For more information on this project, visit Intel’s consumer electronics page.)

Posted by tanner in conceptual, experimentation, innovation, writing on 14 August 2008. 

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