It's All About Balancing Form, Function, Design & Tech, Says Dell's VP Of Advanced Design

Great design makes you feel great. When you look at a beautifully designed smartphone or vacuum cleaner, touch and experience an exceptionally well made kitchen appliance or even a bicycle, it has a way of rubbing off on you, elevating your existence at that moment in time.

Product design is at the heart of delivering experiences that ultimately enhance your life, even in an infinitesimally small way.

Dell

And the world of technology is powered by powerful design experiences, according to Justin Lyles, Vice President, Advanced Design at Dell Technologies. We caught up with him to discuss all things design, from the evolution of PCs to the classic "form vs function" conundrum. Edited excerpts follow:

On Dell's unique product design cycle

Justin Lyles: The XPS products we launched just now, a lot of these design details are something that we've been thinking about for many years. A lot of the things we had in mind seven, eight years ago, the technology wasn't ready yet. So we had a vision for where we wanted XPS to go and we've been working very diligently to innovate around these ideas. The products you see today are a realization of the vision from many years ago.

We have incredibly talented and experienced people working on this (product design) for many, many years and worked together at such a level that we've created something amazing. Whether it's the marketing, the engineering, the design, we have come together as a multidisciplinary team to deliver great products.

Part of the secret sauce behind Dell XPS is the people that create it. And it's the people that listen to the feedback from customers. And we take that in and we work so closely together. No one group is really trying to do something in isolation. It is such an open, collaborative way where we all work together from the very, very beginning, from the very first conversation, all the way to shipping the product. That's how we do it so well. And the solutions are so amazing. The results are the amazing products that you see.

Planning Dell's future product design roadmap

Justin Lyles: I just finished working on Dell's 2020-2022 calendar year products that we're thinking on launching soon. I just finished some design work to really figure out the vision of these upcoming Dell products. But within that body of work, I looked at multi-generation Dell products as well. So, for example, whenever we go and look at XPS, I look at not just one generation, but two or three generations of XPS products to come.

So think 2022, 2024, 2026, and beyond. Now the farther out we go, the broad strokes can be less specific, of course, because we don't know the big pieces of technology or the innovations to come. So it becomes very visionary, the farther out we look into the future. However, I can tell you that at least two, maybe three years is when we start planning for a specific product, but at the same time thinking about how it would evolve over four or five plus years.

Factors that impact a product's design

Justin Lyles: As we think about planning a product, we start with the customer, we start with the user. What's the experience? What is the XPS experience we want the customer to have? That's always first and foremost, it's never about technology alone.

Technology actually comes last, since technology is the enabler of the user experience. So we decide what that ideal experience is, we figure out the design that we can create to deliver that experience. And then the last piece is figuring out the technology that brings it all together, that's the process.

Now the realities are the technology has to be ready to actually deliver the right experience, so many a times we have to wait on technology to mature. Let me give you an example: The new XPS 15 we just launched, we've been able to move the camera back to the top of the bezel. We've wanted to do that for many years. However, the technology was not ready yet for the camera to be that miniaturized. So the second the technology was ready, the innovation was there to deliver the right design and the best experience. We've now moved it back to the top where it naturally should be for the best experience. So that was an example of waiting on technology to realize the best experience.

Evolving user design expectations

Justin Lyles: I was actually hired into Dell 13 years ago as a designer for XPS. So I was a lead designer before I became a leader at Dell. I've been working on XPS for many, many years, and I've seen some big changes.

Of course, technology has changed. Things have gotten more powerful, thinner batteries have changed, displays have changed, but more importantly customer's needs and their expectations have changed as well. People want something that is more mobile. So products have been becoming smaller and smaller, and a lot of it's been driven by related industries.

Smartphones are something that almost everybody has, and it's something as an industry that has been moving very, very quickly. That has helped drive user demand in a way in people's expectations of technology. You know, what they went from a traditional keyboard to a touch screen. These things are driving customer expectations and it's changed many other things -- look at TVs for instance. Of course laptops as well. It's changed automobiles, all the technology and customers' expectations have evolved radically in the past five to ten years.

Form vs function

Justin Lyles: That's the ultimate design question, I love it! We definitely talk about this a lot internally, with respect to XPS -- when we plan the products, when we design the products, when we engineer the products.

The important word for us -- and any good product designer is -- balance. Now it may sound as cliche but, I sincerely and genuinely tell you, this is very important because we use this word a lot internally at Dell. We want to make sure that it's never form over function or function over form. It's never one over the other. It's always in balance, always in harmony, that applies to everything -- design and technology, performance and product size, the experiences, all these things.

I like to think that if we ever deliver something that is the absolute best of something in the industry, we've done something wrong. I'll give you an example -- If XPS was the absolute thinnest product of its kind in the market, then it would mean we've sacrificed something else in the product to make it that thin. And we do not want to compromise or sacrifice anything. If we give you the absolute lightest product in the industry, we've sacrificed something like battery life or materials. So we always want to make sure that the experience and the design, the technology to performance the form and the function are always in proper balance, but both are elevated to the highest level in balance that creates the best product. And that's really the equation to make XPS an amazing product.

Sustainable design philosophy at scale

Justin Lyles: Sustainability is a very important topic. It is very popular right now, it gets a lot of attention, but we've been focused on sustainability for many years at Dell. We used aluminium, which is a very recyclable material. Our packaging has been really the driver of a lot of these things. Not only have we used the ocean bound plastics for the last few years within our trays and our XPS packaging, but prior to that we were using bamboo, different paper pulps and even mushroom based packaging experiments. Not just at XPS, but other brands at Dell also really focus on sustainability as an important aspect.

Recently Dell has announced their 2030 social impact goals -- we call them our moonshot goals. These cover a wide range of social impact topics, but there are definitely some of those that are focused on sustainability. By 2030, we want to make sure our packaging is 100% sustainable. We want to make sure for every product we sell, we reuse and recycle an equivalent amount.

We also want to make sure that when we make our products, at least 50% of the products are made from recyclable or reclaimed materials. I cannot stress enough how passionate we are internally about this. We spend so much time and we have such great discussions inside internally about what can we do better? How much further can we push this? You know, we want to definitely lead the industry in these different topics. Not only because it's good from a competitive standpoint, but even if the competitors were not doing this, and this was not a popular topic, Dell would still be pushing this because we believe it's the right thing to do.

On designing world class products in India

Justin Lyles: Design is something that's not located in any one location. Geographic region design exists everywhere, because it's almost a universal human trait to create. I've talked to designers from India, spoken at universities, meeting designers from everywhere.

I embrace the need for anyone anywhere to express the human need to create things. I definitely like the discussion around regionalization versus globalization. We want to make products that are great globally, but regionally we need to make sure things are still relevant. The more feedback we can get from different people and the more creation people do in different regions, I think that's a great thing. I'm passionate about design and creating design communities that can create their own things because regional representation is really important.

Source of personal inspiration

Justin Lyles: What inspires me? I'm inspired by the world around me. I'm inspired by amazing things that other people create. So maybe the best way of saying it is I'm inspired by my fellow human, and that's not limited to any one thing other brands will create. I love things that are created in this world. I love change. I love seeing things that move our civilization forward. I like to see things that humans create and accomplish through design.

Human accomplishment is exciting to me in all aspects, whether it's architecture or sports, art or music. So there's no one specific thing that I get overly excited about, but there's just different things that inspire me and influence me in different ways. And it can be somewhat random, but I definitely spend a lot of my time being aware of the world around me. And that's not just, you know, a North American thing, it's a global thing.

I follow so many websites, I follow so many things, keep up with different product launches across different industries. The news, current events. I'm very much a student of the here and now. And then I think about the future. I know that's not very specific, but it's hard to nail down. As someone who creates, a part of creation is about how I'm influenced by everything happening around me.

PC design present and future

Justin Lyles: I think we're in a very exciting time and it's getting more exciting every single day. As a designer, I really have a negative reaction to design something just for the sake of design change or for the sake of technology change. If it's not meaningful, if it doesn't directly benefit the user, I'm not sure why anyone would do it.

There's always a push in all the different brands and different industries to put the next new thing out, to keep people excited and to keep things moving. My personal style is to only change something when change is meaningful. You know, when technology pushes us to an inflection point where it's time to evolve a product in a very meaningful way for the user. That gets me excited and I think that's happening right now.

We're at a point in time where user experience is driving things forward right now. And user's expectations around the experiences they want is evolving very rapidly and it's driving meaningful change. That's why I feel we are at an extremely exciting time in the PC journey. Yes, in the past, we've seen periods of change that weren't as meaningful, felt somewhat superficial, but I'm excited right now because the things that I see happening are truly a benefit for the user. And that's very exciting and I think we're just accelerating and we're going to see some amazing things over the next couple of years.