For netbooks, design is king
Back in the early days of the dot-com era, when there were still such things as rockstar game developers, John Romero left ID Sofware and struck out to found his own development house, Ion Storm, on the back of a single dictum: “design is king.” The idea was that an over-emphasis by a developer on the under-the-hood aspects of games could actually detract from the overall user experience, especially in a world where game engines had become commoditized and anyone could license on to create yet another clone of an existing title.
Though Romero ultimately failed in his quest to create a breakthrough (or even an on-time) game, today’s portable makers would do well to adopt his design-centric philosophy, especially in the red-hot netbook space.
A recent study of online opinions about netbooks by market research firm Biz360 showed that netbook buyers who post user reviews are talking about three things: performance, display, and features.
Netbooks right now are based mainly on Intel’s Atom processors, and given that the entire category is a variation on a basic reference design there’s really not much to be done in the performance area (other than add a fast SSD, which can make a huge difference). The Biz360 article does note that users don’t seem to be that impressed with netbook performance across the board, and are bringing to the products expectations formed from using more high-powered portables. This is something that netbook makers should be aware of, since performance still matters to users.
As for display, display sizes in netbooks are on the rise, in spite of Microsoft’s stance on hitching XP’s license fees to this particular netbook attribute.
Ultimately, the real place where netbook makers can differentiate themselves is in design, and if what I saw on the show floor this past CES was any indication, some of them are getting the message. I saw quite a few interesting netbook designs that indicated that the manufacturer had taken seriously the aesthetic element. Obnoxious branding was out and sleek, understated lines were in.
There are some netbook makers, though, who are content to reheat an Intel reference design and serve it up to consumers. This strategy mystifies me, because when everyone is using the same family of processors a good design is the easiest and best way to differentiate your product.
Aside from overall appearance, the other big design area that the Biz360 study indicated users care about is the keyboard. There’s apparently plenty of griping online about netbook keyboards, and this makes sense because, apart from the display, it’s the part of the interface that people spend the most time with.
In this respect, I was a bit surprised to see that pointing devices didn’t get a lot of discussion, but it appears that netbook users are fairly happy with the standard touchpad.
Ultimately, careful and deliberate design goes a long way in creating a brand preference in this red-hot emerging portable category. And this is true for both consumers and enterprise customers. Gone are the days of beige boxes on the desktop and some shade of black or gray as the only color for a portable. Competition in the netbook space is fierce, and netbook vendors need every edge they can get.
