Contrary to popular belief, PC OEMs do care about their product design. But they have very valid business reasons for not caring as much about product esthetics as an Apple does.
One of the big challenges of Design in the business world is in measuring “good design” and its value for the business bottom line. It may help to think of Design along two axis – functional product design, and esthetics. Functional design is the combination of physical attributes that define the product and its physical interactions with humans: product features and placement of features, weight, shape, thickness, texture, temperature, would be part of the functional design. Esthetics would include color, shape, weight, thickness, texture, placement of visual elements, etc.
Many of these factors influence both the functional design and esthetics, but in different ways. For example, the shape of a car impacts its friction in the air, passenger comfort, engine access, storage space and access, etc. The shape of a car also influences our visual perception of it as friendly, sporty, practical, edgy, feminine, etc. Lightweight can be functionally desirable to increase portability or usability, but could be perceived “esthetically” as lower quality.
PC manufacturers care a lot about functional design. They spend a ton of time and money researching better product usability, engineering product features that will enhance the functional design of their product. I would venture that HP and Dell do a very good job at hardware functional designs, which lead to product that are functionally complete and for the most part highly useable (their software experience design is another issue however). Feature for feature, HP and Dell actually have products that are superior to Apple in functional design. They integrate more functions that what Apple does: card readers, removable media slots, media access buttons, etc. Nothing “earth-shattering” maybe (though I do find it a pain to have to carry a separate USB media card reader to use with my Macbook), but a slight edge nevertheless.
Esthetics is where Apple takes a different strategic direction in design. Apple is investing an important amount of money and product cost in the esthetic qualities of their products. They are successful doing so with PCs because they have a business model that is centered around high product profitability, not pure market share. PC OEMs strategy is high volume and high market share, across all price points, with razor-thin margins.
In summary this is how I explain the status of PC Design today:
- Apple has a strategy of limited market share with high profit margin with a premium product line. That strategy warrants a high investment in product esthetics design to maintain the premium value of the Mac.
- PC OEMs (HP, Dell, etc) compete for very high market share with low product margin and very tight product costs. They do invest considerable resources in functional product design that maximizes product functionality across all price points, at a very efficient product cost burden.
- PC OEMs invest in industrial and esthetics design for their products. Their products typically incorporate a higher number of features than a Mac and have a specific look and feel that matches their brand values.
- The value of esthetics is very hard to measure and quantify, especially for large corporations that are very numbers/volume/share driven.
- The value of investing more in industrial and esthetic design is relative to the business model pursued. Apple gets high value for its design investments with a premium priced business. OEMs like HP and Dell enjoy very high market shares at their current level of design investment, and do not see a positive ROI for higher design investment in their high volume/high market share business model.
