Hauser’s Concept for ‘Granny’ Would Simplify Computer Use
Here’s a Pentium III processor. Show us what you’ve got.
For the staff of the Hauser consulting firm of Westlake Village, that challenge meant coming up with a simple computer design that would make even an untrained, computer-phobic user feel at ease.
The challenge, presented by Intel recently to a group of product design firms, was meant to inspire ideas that would make one of the fastest personal computers as user-friendly and unintimidating as possible.
“If you can design a product for your grandmother, it can easily be used for all members of the home,” said Dave Stetler, Hauser’s director of business development, explaining the company’s approach to the challenge. “We’ve got all these remarkable tools for people to communicate, but it’s beyond the scope of people age 65 and upward.”
With that focus, the Hauser team set about creating the Granny personal computer concept. The company presented the idea in February at the Intel Developer Forum in Palm Springs. The forum was the second sponsored by the computer manufacturer to test the uses of its hardware and software.
The Granny computer, still in a conceptual form, would have point and click icons that would make navigating the system, and communicating through e-mail or fax, a simple process. It would have handwriting and voice recognition and remote control to be used as a substitute for a mouse. And it would have a streamlined appearance that would fit unobtrusively in the home.
“We want to have a device in the home designed for the environment as well as ease of use,” Stetler said. “It fits with the decor, but also addresses ease of set-up. . . . Having a way to interface [with the computer] that can be easily understood by users is an important area for the growth of the computer industry in general.”
Hauser’s mission is to research how customers use products and try to incorporate the knowledge into an improved model.
Its team of designers, anthropologists and social scientists consult with manufacturers in the medical, consumer electronics and telecommunications industries to create products that in style or function are comfortable and easy to use.
Hauser’s clients include Bayer Corp., Johnson & Johnson, Smith Kline Beecham, Panasonic, Patagonia, Texas Instruments, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Gateway 2000 and Compaq.
The Westlake Village company, founded in 1966, has contributed design work on such products as a kidney dialysis machine, a fetal heart monitor, cases for hard and soft contact lenses, cellular phones and computer terminals, monitors and printers.
Along with the senior-compatible Granny, the Intel forum featured designs tailored to other niche markets such as children and parents. Steve Whalley, PC initiatives manager for Intel, said that whether it’s the Granny itself or other concepts targeting similar submarkets, such tailored designs are not far off.
“You should actually start seeing easier-to-use [PCs] in limited use in the U.S. late this year, into the holiday season,” he said.
“It’s not that far away.”
Whalley said that simplified computers should have a significant impact on the growth of the PC industry and could develop quickly as a trend.
“There are three reasons people are not buying PCs,” Whalley said. “One is relevance--they just don’t need it--one is price and one is ease of use. If you look at ease of use, they’re saying, ‘Yeah, I have the income, I have the relevance, but I’m not buying at the moment because what I’ve heard is they can be a bit difficult to use.’ That’s about 15% to 20% of the population out there that has an interest in PCs and isn’t buying them.”
Whalley said the older population, particularly, is an important market segment for the computer industry to reach.
“The senior-citizen market is obviously a fairly substantial market given that they have the time and the income to use PCs, but I would guess that there are a number out there putting off buying them because maybe there are some difficulties in ease of use,” he said. “The Granny approach is probably a good step in the right direction.”
Imre Molnar, director of operations for Hauser, said the push for more and more technologically advanced machines in various industries has meant that customer preferences might have been ignored.
“We become so addicted to the technology race, adding features, that we do it in isolation, not thinking about the market or the user need,” Molnar said. “The VCR is a perfect example. It’s a product loaded with features, but nobody over the age of 12 can operate the thing.”
As is true of Hauser’s other designs, the Granny is intended to make things easier for users of all shapes and sizes. Granny stands for Generationally Relevant Appliance for the Non-Technical New user and a Yardstick for the future.
Molnar said there is a large market of people being lost for lack of technological expertise.
“We think they are being left out altogether--the people who do not have the technological wherewithal to operate a computer and a keyboard,” he said. “Elderly people are the most extreme of non-techno users and if we solved the problem for them, there would be a much wider market.”
