There’s a new critical management member for notebook manufacturers whose unsung but highly visible efforts make or break new products. The newest strategic manager moving into mahogany row is someone whose work space is apt top be as eclectic as it is productive. They inhabit the only executive offices where you’re as likely to find a stark collection of great, but damn near equally obscure, writing implements and sharp edged tools for shaping and detailing the materials used to model new computer models.

Industrial design, an academic discipline combining advanced consumer marketing and research concepts with fields such as art, design and mechanical or other engineering categories has moved out of boutique third-party shops and into mainstream portable computing executive management.

These new class of managers are “design chiefs” and more recently “vice president of design.” They are charged with turning user and marketing or engineering concepts into products that not only resonate across several markets, but which also have the wherewithal needed for profits and long product lives.

Product design has become a vitally important part of portable computing that can make or break individual brands. In fact, according to officials of some portable makers, it’s so important that some companies with operations in the US and in Asia now work on designs for portable computers 24 hours a day. As a team in the US ends its workday, its day’s efforts are turned over to members of the same team on the other side of the world.

Because of the changing nature of portable computing designers need to stay well in front of the trend line, suggests Hewlett Packard portable designer Stacy Wolfe, who works in Houston.

HP’s Mr. Wolf’s career in the portable business began in 1995 and his first major design product was the HP TC100, a convertible notebook that gained a large following among students and academic professionals. Today, Stacy Wolf is in charge of consumer and business notebook designs. Managing notebooks designs for the consumer market is a fast-paced assignment, Mr Wolfe noted.

“Most of the time we will take in four to five months of research that begins in specific regions. (Designers) need to know what’s important for regions and the worldwide market.” Mr. Wolfe noted that the consumer notebook segment is growing rapidly but “steadily changing. The hunger for consumer electronics is amazing.” Overall, he says “the smaller your devices get, the closer you become tied to the market.” The Golden Rule in design remains “Weight to design,” declares HP’s Wolf.

Like a many notebook makers HP has a large installed base in academic/student computing. “It’s a two-part market: one group of students wants a desktop experience; another part wants a true notebook experience. Going forward, how do you design one notebook that’s really several products for the entire audience?”

Stacy Wolf is one of several designers now on staff with portable computer makers. The most well known may be David Hill, a senior vice president of Lenovo who started his career with IBM’s ThinkPad group and is responsible for the very first ThinkPad design, which he’s often reported as saying, was influenced by a Japanese wooden Bento meal box. Since then Mr. Hill’s influence has been impressed on virtually every member of the ThinkPad line, including the ThinkPad 701 Butterfly (an ultraportable that used a folding keyboard to reduce its overall foot print.)

Hill is generally regarded as a pioneering portable computer designer. His work has been showcased in several museums and by numerous design associations and publications. Several co-founders of mobile computer companies have also left their imprint on the designs and interfaces of various machines. Apple’s Steve jobs has a well deserved reputation for putting designs that bind the user to the computer ahead of build costs.

Palm Computing co-founder Jeff Hawkins also is worth noting. Over a period lasting several years, Hawkins whittled, shaved, and sanded wooden models of the device that eventually become the first Palm Pilot, enhancing those models with glossy photos of his applications pasted into the screen’s location. In his 20 year career Hawkins has designed several systems, earning praises from Industrial Designer Associations for his efforts.

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