Award winning design for the student.

The Solo 1150 series from Gateway is an all-in-one notebook PC that targets the student and home markets.

The project goal was to generate a total user-driven design solution that would capitalize on Gateway's brand image and performance toolbox. Gateway needed to define a unique design language throughout the product line. Humanizing the technology and packaging it into formats that expressed the emotional and functional accessibility that customers want and need were a few of the challenges in this effort.

The project goal was to generate total user driven design solutions that capitalize on Gateway's brand name and performance toolbox.  Gateway was looking to define a unique design language through this product line, which would continue to define and celebrate their unique brand. This would include objectives such humanizing the technology and packaging it into formats that expressed the emotional and functional accessibility that customers both want and need. 

The design language evolved around the theme of  "friendliness and familiarity", through an elegant execution of the relationship between "soft" and "hard" design details. Ergonomically designed "soft touch" pads around common gripping areas compliment the round and curvy overall form to provide a accessible yet robust and portability solution. The grip pads were form iconic reference to the "cow pattern", a signature design element in Gateway's brand identity. Friendly execution with a visually slimming design in the Solo 1150 set-off the functionally useful features including a 12.1" display within a footprint of 13.28" x 10.50", while maintaining a small enough envelope to easily fit into a backpack or other small carry-along.

The Solo 1150 series laptop computer accounts for approximately 40% of Gateway's all-in-one notebook PC sales.  The combination of price, features, and industrial design has allowed Gateway to add new markets while expanding within their current markets.  These new markets, primarily students and education are largely new to Gateway's consumer business. Shortly after product launch, focus group studies revealed that the Solo's unique ID consistently ranked among the top.  

Gateway demands that its product be durable, easily upgradeable, and long lasting. Users of these past products will expect new systems to be equally long-lived and be updateable with expansion slot instead of being replaced. The design team drove towards the goal of having Gateway products fit so uniquely and emotionally into the needs of users that it would encourage a personal attachment to products.

The family's aesthetic helps Gateway expand beyond the standard "pizza box" while bringing gentle simplicity to a crowded marketplace of complicated solutions. The dual tone gray aesthetic ties into the universal appeal of the "cow pattern" providing brand consistency. The overmolded areas also provide an easily identifiable, comfortable high touch zone that communicates "take me with you".

Humanizing and increasing accessibility to technology is an essential responsibility of the industrial design process. Gateway's interest in

humanizing their technological entry into the education field demonstrates a commitment to accessibility for our student population. Ultimately, as a population, we all benefit from the enhanced accessibility of technology by students at all levels.

The design was recognized with an IDEA award by Business week magazine and the Industrial Design Society of America.