We had Tom Kelley of IDEO drop by for a talk and Q&A session a couple of Mondays ago where he talked a lot about the role of the anthropologist in IDEO. Earlier in the evening, a real-life anthropologist from Intel was at hand when some students present their results of an anthropology project: “Mundane Happiness”.
It is interesting to know that observing people and how they use things can lead to product ideas and improvements.
One of my observations is the the following:
When a notebook computer user wants to use her notebook, one of the first things she does, even before turning on the computer, is to take out the AC adaptor and look for a power outlet.
You can see that at the airport, Starbucks, school and even during the Tom Kelley talk.
Think of it. The Tom Kelley talk was scheduled to last 45 minutes. This is a lot less time than the average battery life of a medium size notebook. So why would you need to plug in an AC adaptor?
Is this something we have been brought up on: this “compulsive” need to plug in and charge our notebooks?
I suspect that PC manufacturers have also observed this phenomena and are actually doing something about it: like providing 3-cell batteries as the default in many of their notebooks models, in particular, the lower cost ones.
When the majority of users have their notebooks plugged in 90% of the time, there is absolutely no need for 9-cell or 12-cell batteries. These users place more importance on price, memory and hard disk size when trying to decide which notebook to buy. With today’s processor labeling (e.g. TL-60 or 7200), even the processor speed is not longer important: you can no longer easily figure out the speed from the processor model name.
The result is that PC manufacturers can then price their notebooks less and therefore be more competitive. At the same time, they benefit financially from the additional sales of large capacity batteries to users who do actually need to use their computers without access to AC power.