Intel's Josh Newman On Social Science And COVID-19's Impact On Product Engineering

Whether you accept it or not, COVID-19 pandemic has changed the world in many ways -- far beyond the obvious ones we are forced to embrace, like wearing a face mask every time you stepped out or social distancing like your life depended on it, and then some.

These changes have hit us in a jarring, uncomfortable way. But if there's one thing that's kept us all going -- still keeps us going -- is technology.

Representative image: Unsplash

This pandemic has shown how technology keeps us connected, allows us to work from home, attend virtual classrooms and entertain us during our downtime at a global, planet-wide scale like never before. Working at Intel, which occupies a lion's share of the global PC market, Joshua "Josh" Newman is acutely aware of it all -- COVID-19's disruption and its impact on customer-facing technologies.

I spoke to him on the sidelines of one of 2020's key technology announcements -- Intel's 11th generation Tiger Lake chips -- and how social science informed design and engineering will help Intel redefine personal computing during COVID-19 and beyond. Edited excerpts from our conversation follow:

Innovation in thin and light laptop market

"The Project Athena Innovation Program is a platform approach for Intel and we are certainly focusing a lot of that innovation to begin with in that premium, thin and light laptop space, because there's so many key experience problems to be solved for the mobile go-getter," says Josh Newman, the Vice President of Client Computing Group and General Manager for Mobile Innovation, Intel Corporation. Problems of high-achievers and independent workers who want to balance great performance with great battery life in a thin-n-light form factor with no compromises, according to Newman, so that's definitely top priority. But that doesn't necessarily translate into just a few bells and whistles flashed across a handful of laptop SKUs on few preferred OEMs.

"We engage with over 150 companies in the ecosystem, across all different types of components, from RAM to SSD, software to cameras, to displays and so forth," explains Josh Newman. "In the process of doing that and using our Project Athena Open Labs to help qualify components, we don't just improve the value chain and supply chain for only Intel Evo branded laptops but we actually make it better for more affordable laptops."

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As an example, Josh tries to explain how Intel engages with display panel vendors -- companies that manufacture and supply laptop screens -- to talk about their larger roadmap than just the roadmap for premium laptops, to have technologies that maybe start in the premium segment but also create better panels for low-cost education laptops further down the road. "We do expect the benefits of this platform approach that Project Athena represents to impact the entire PC market overtime," says Josh Newman.

Intel vs Competition: What matters

"I think it's a number of things," Josh laughs mildly, as he tries to unpack what consumers demand, stuff that's going to keep Intel head and shoulders above everyone else in the PC market. "When people look forward to a PC experience, they just want everything to work, technology that keeps them in the flow, where they don't want to worry about compatibility issues at a hardware and software level," he says, as a starting point.

"But then I think that the level of platform innovation, the level of performance that goes into the processors themselves," explains Josh, while looking back at the 11th generation Intel Core "Tiger Lake" processor launch, "where we talked about the best processor for thin and light laptops, we made that very clear that it was the best. Compared to our prior generation, and despite offering higher performance and higher functionality, it's also a more power efficient processor, which means we continue to make improvements."

Beyond that the sheer scale of Intel's intimate engagement with OEMs, where it's not just about giving them a processor to build a laptop, but "doing all the fine-tuning to take advantage of all the 11th Gen Intel Core processor improvements, making sure the BIOS and firmware is tuned, platform software running optimally in all the different scenarios, and that's essentially what Intel Evo brand is all about," says Josh.

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"It means it's been through our verification labs, tuned and verified to the experiences we specify so that users get the best combination of performance, features, battery life and all that, and I don't think any of our competition offers anything that's nearly as complete. And all this is informed by what we've learned from our social science work to identify what people really need. And nobody's doing that better than Intel," says Josh Newman.

Social science dictating engineering decisions

Workloads are changing, users are changing as well, so how does Intel keep up? "The work Intel does with the software community is important to make informed decisions based on user behaviour," informs Josh Newman. "To make sure that they have the tools and the capabilities to innovate new software, workflows and workloads for taking advantage of all innovation we're building into each generation of processor. This is an annual investment we're making to keep the developer ecosystem really inspired and motivated to do their innovation on Intel," he adds.

"This is especially critical because just in the last six months what people did on their laptop has changed dramatically, the amount of video collaboration is shooting through the roof," Newman explains, pointing out how Intel's social science research shows not only how many more people are gaming, but it also shows simply how many more people are using their PC or laptop's browser to run their lives, and how browser tab management and the types of applications that run inside browsers are getting more important to users.

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There are a lot of layers between a hardware chip and browser that connects to the internet, and it's critical for Intel to make all those layers work optimally at their best. "So we work with OS providers, browser providers and standalone apps to help drive more advanced creation workflows or gaming experiences. Just to give you an idea of the level of our engagement, we're working with all the major video collaboration software vendors to make sure they have easy access to our low power gaussian neural accelerator for background noise removal on video calls, right? Geography plays a big part, obviously, so not just in the US, we work with top software providers for collaboration in China and India and Australia, and other geographies to ensure we¡¯re covering all bases," reveals Josh Newman, as he underscores the value of social science research to inform and empower companies like Intel to solve real-world, customer-facing problems,

Long-term impact of COVID-19

This pandemic has shown all of us how invaluable technology products and services have become in not only preserving any semblance of our pre-COVID way of life, but helping us get through all the misery, pain, joy and happiness we are all feeling in this forgettable year, to adjust to the so-called 'new normal'. How much of this change is temporary versus long-lasting is anybody's guess, from the looks of it.

"Like everybody else in the world, we've been observing and trying to figure out the answer to that question as well, and we think that there are behaviours and new sort of work norms that are going to endure," Josh Newman says in a measured tone.

"I think before the pandemic, majority of people were less comfortable using video calling or joining video meetings, but I think a lot of people are over that now. Still there's a growing need for balance, in terms of time spent on video calls versus time to relax and think, focus and be creative," Josh argues, while pointing at growing popularity of services like monday.com or mural.com which is all about remote whiteboarding and remote project planning.

"Powerful technology tools that might have existed in the background before are coming front and center, and in a race to make things work people and workplaces are adapting and finding ways to make them work like never before," explains Josh, because if it works and saves cost and time, "you'll keep doing that in the future. And so I think the enduring thing is there'll be a balance of getting back in the conference rooms together and sharing whiteboards."

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Josh Newman also speaks about a study Intel conducted into independent professionals and freelancers last year, trying to understand how they use laptops and PCs in a non-corporate environment to get things done. "They're all incredibly adept at different tools mandated by different clients," he explains. Things like Slack and Zoom, Teams and Skype, and how they get work done on a laptop, specifically. And after COVID-19 struck, workers of large companies are showing glimpses of adaptive behaviour exhibited by independent professionals, according to Josh Newman.

"They're starting to look and talk more like the independent professionals we were talking to a year ago, in terms of what they need from their laptop, and what a delightful work experience looks and feels like to them, and so we are starting to see some convergence there in terms of user behaviour," Josh suggests.

And it's here, he feels, that COVID-19 disruption is driving lasting change to some extent. "The tools, collaboration behaviors, efficiencies in balancing remote versus doing things in person will definitely endure, because if they're good for business and they're good for people's work-life balance and overall delight then they should endure the test of time," sums up Josh Newman.