The art of designing a workstation the height of an espresso cup

Creating technology for the design community can be intimidating. Designers are naturally hot on aesthetics, functionality matters deeply and for them, the devil is in the detail. Style over substance is abhorred, substance over style is scorned upon. However, like many other industries, designers can fall into the trap of using sub-standard technology. Sometimes, it’s easier to stick with what you know than branch out and experiment with something new, only to be disappointed.

In part, this could be the reason why some 2.9 million CAD users are still not using workstations – turbo-charged, professional grade computers, with rapid microprocessors, large amounts of RAM and special features, such as professional graphics.

In the absence of workstations, they’re probably contending with productivity bottlenecks, exasperating flexibility issues and challenges producing anything beyond 2D design. They may have hit the wall, inspiration-wise, no thanks to limited desk space, outdated technology and the sort of background noise that distracts rather than aids concentration.

Recognising a large portion of the creative community remains underserved and creatively malnourished when it comes to technology, our team embarked upon the most significant overhaul of the workstation to date – resulting in the HP Z2 Mini Workstation – which is three times more powerful than a business-class PC mini, the height of an espresso cup and the epitome of elegance. In the spirit of sharing best-practices, I’ve tried to capture some of the key principles that guided our creative process.

Don’t cramp their style

In any design work, first you have to think about the environment – in this case, the office. In the 1980s, standardised furniture was cheap to buy in bulk and created a uniformity that was devoid of any real personality and inspiration. A lot has changed since then. Today, offices have been gamified within an inch of themselves.

Take Mind Candy’s offices. It features a modern treehouse as a meeting room and all manner of verdant greenery. Salgos Cano Architecture in Madrid is a tale of two panoramas. It’s ostensibly half underground and half outdoors, thanks to a glass canopy overhead.

It would be a disgrace to let these bold set designs down with ugly technology. Much of the Z2 Mini’s journey from design to manufacturing was devoted to style. HP’s in-house design team dedicated themselves to creating a painstakingly exquisite but subtle workstation, one that complements the best offices.

As much as possible, the ambition should be to up the style stakes, not to cramp them.

Know the best things come in small packages

In the past workstations were designed for large office environments, but over the past few years workspaces have shrunk dramatically yet users still have the same performance requirements. HP’s latest incarnation, the Z2 Mini, pushes the boundaries at a mere 2.3 inches (5.8 cm) tall, meaning professionals can fully immerse themselves in their creations, without cluttering their workspace and becoming overrun by cables and large, ugly black boxes.

Small is desirable but it shouldn’t come at the expense of functionality. By refusing to compromise on performance, we packed a wagon load of functionality into a sleek, silver grey octagonal powerhouse. We also added a discrete graphics card for enabling blistering 3D design, whisper-quiet acoustics and enough ports to support 4-6 displays.

We similarly packed the Z2 Mini with cutting-edge cooling solutions, enabling us to cool an immense amount power in an unprecedentedly small space, including custom piping (ordinarily the preserve of Ultrabooks), a calibre of fans normally used in desktop tower PCs and discrete venting.

Throughout our efforts, I was reminded of what the economist, E. F. Schumacher once opined: “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage—to move in the opposite direction.”

Create a new vocabulary

When remastering a product, you need to bring users along for the journey. Considering the HP Z2 Mini’s dramatic decrease in size, a degree of adjustment from the user’s perspective will be necessary.

When launching the new workstation, we identified a few key influencers and asked them to trial the technology.

Studio Libeskind originally planned to offload their new Z2 Mini’s onto their secretaries. After coming face-to-face with the technology they realised they had a pocket rocket on their hands and came out as keen advocates of the product – enabling them to create cutting-edge designs.

Where possible create a new lexicon for your breakthrough features. We’re decoupling ‘small’ from limited performance. How do you plan to turn the world on its head?

Be obsessive about details

One of the greats in design, Charles Eames, once said “The details are not the details. They make the design.”

We sweated the details with the outside appearance, from the workstation’s mounting positions and how the cooling vents are positioned and accented with a metallic finish, to the modernised HP logo emblazoned on the top.

By enabling several mounting options, the new workstation can be positioned on or under the desk, behind a display or on the wall, thus tapping into the zeitgeist for the invisible (which, according to CES 2017, is the ultimate ambition in hardware).

Taking things a step further, it stands to reason that if invisibility is the goal, you don’t want users to have to stoop down, lean over or perform strange contortions to turn off a computer. So we designed a nifty remote power on and off function to enable the system to be powered on when it’s mounted behind a display.

The same meticulous attention to detail is evident in the workstation’s innermost parts. If you were to peer inside, you’d see that everything is packed neatly together, to allow for blank, clutter-free space.

By going through this process we learnt some important lessons. Namely that every feature should be scrutinised, from functionality to design, to create a flawless experience and that engrossing yourself in the finer points makes a difference.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

My final over-arching principle is to accept the inevitable. You might blaze the trail but others will follow in your wake. This is a corollary of market disruption. Don’t be possessive, simply want to serve the underserved and give gifted people the tools they need to create the future.

The HP Z2 Mini Workstation is a significant departure from its predecessors. Its diminutive size alone is disruptive. We’re under no illusions that others will replicate our success; and so they should. Smartphones wouldn’t be ubiquitous today if the tech industry as a whole didn’t get on-board. Similarly, creating new-generation workstations isn’t a singular effort. By working together we can transform all manner of industries.