Problem: Sharing a printer isn’t fun.
Most people have a negative experience printers at the workplace. Printers don’t interact well with more than one user at a time. This becomes a problem in a shared environment like the office where many users are using the product at the same time.
In this project, I wanted to reconceive the printer for the sharing between many users. My goal was to make the printer into a necessary but painful interaction into something pleasant to use and behold. I wanted to imagine how a printer designed to be shared be like.
Research for Design
I took an extensive look at the printers themselves and the environment they inhibit. I discovered that these office printers are usually larger than their domestic counterparts to handle the heavier duty. As a result of their size, they take up a lot of space on people’s desks. These beige boxes don’t blend very well into their environment even as they are cast to the corners and out of sight.
To get a sense of what the problem with printer, I went out and spoke to several power users who use printers regularly as well as power users who work in print shops. Out of the many discussions, there were a few points that I started hearing over and over again.
The first point had to do with the way printer handles multiple print jobs. Almost every printer that fits on a desk deposit finished print jobs into a single stack. While it’s hard to find this a problem for personal printers, things get very hectic very quickly as you start sharing the printer with other users. People’s print jobs start to get mixed up and it takes time to find your document sandwiched between pages others have printed.
Another downside to the printing experience had to do with maintenance. Many printers forced people to bend down and open the printer to add paper. The chore of bringing the printer back to life gets in the way of people and their tasks at hand and disrupts their workday experience.
Insights from Discovery
Printing is like using a toilet.
After researching people’s experience with printers, I found that printing today is like using the toilet. Just like toilets, you share printers between many people, have to refill the paper manually, and it jams when you need it most.
No one likes to wait.
I discovered that people spend a lot of time looking for their print job stuck in between other people’s documents. If there could be a better way to improve print job sorting, the time people spend lining up in front of the printer could be reduced.
Maintenance is a hassle.
Printers today force users to bend over and constantly take care of them. Everything from toner exchange to reloading the paper tray is manual. Some added level of automation would dramatically improve the user experience.
Space is a premium.
Printers take up too much desk space in the office, creating visual clutter and ruining the ambiance. Most offices hide them in the corner, usually by the restroom to keep them out of sight. If the printer were to be placed in the open, it would need to be designed to save desk space and more open.
Strategy for Design
Make the experience social.
I had a shift in my thinking when I realized that printing could become a social ritual. An appropriate analogy would be the water cooler where spontaneous interpersonal interactions take place.
Design the paper before designing the printer.
Instead of trying to design a better printer, I realized the real opportunity in designing how different print job is organized and how it could inform and drive the design of the printer. It was more important to design the interaction, rather than the object itself.
Enable the printer to be furniture independent.
Printers take up desk space because they can’t stand on their own. If the printer could be placed on a free-standing pedestal, it would remove the necessity for furniture and free up additional work space.
Mind Mapping
Before I dived into solving the problems I had found from my research visually, I mapped out everything I wanted to achieve with the design into a mind map. This helped figure out what was important and which problems would be addressed.
Designing the Paper Arrangement
The singular stack doesn’t work in a shared user scenario because every job is placed on top of one another. There is no way of separating these documents and cause the users endless frustration and chaos. So I tried to find better ways of arranging these documents so that people can have a seamless experience finding exactly what they needed to print.
I experimented with various arrangements for sorting documents. The first few were mechanically challenging and visually cluttered.
I finally arrived at the ideal arrangement of arraying documents into a fan which would be simple both to look at and engineer. While this arrangement took up more space than the singular stack, given that the printer would not have to sit on the desk actually removed the constraints of desk space.
Form Evolution
With the paper arrangement designed, I moved on to design the printer that would array documents in this manner. The first and the most obvious iteration was a round table on top of a cylinder. While this form met the immediate requirements, it liked the elegance and lightness I was looking for.
The second iteration used the same gesture, but with less volume. By replacing the cylinder with a thinner rod, the form became much lighter visually. I also moved the round table in between the cylindrical mass that would house the mechanical components.
Concept: Arc
After several iterations, the overall form of the printer was defined. I decided to call the concept Arc because of the way it arrays the papers into a circular fan. With the intent established, all that remained was delivering the concept into a believable design.
Computer Aided Design
I went inside to model various mechanical components that would be required for the printer and began to define each aspect of the physical design.
A valuable addition was the paper tray on the top that would not only act as a feeder for printing, but also refill the paper try automatically, without the user having to access the internals.
but should the user ever need to access the inside for changing the toner or refilling the paper tray, I designed a telescoping mechanism that would bring the component at the user’s level, instead of forcing them to go down to the printer’s level.
Finally, the foot pedestal was designed to make the printer free-standing. This obviated the need for additional desk space, while enabling the printer to be placed at the center of the office, and not in the corner.
Branding + Logo
In addition to the physical design, I conducted a brief exercise to define the product’s logo. I made use of simple repeating geometric elements that made references to the physical design of the printer.
The final logo was applied to the renderings to give a name to the printer and complete the narrative.
Delivery
My favorite part of the process was when I realized that I wasn’t actually designing a printer, but people’s experience with receiving their documents. I realized that the most important thing for a printer is to get out of the way so that when the user walks up to it, they can immediately find their document and go on with their business.
The final result was a printer unlike any other printer ever produced. I wanted to transform the printer from a heavy utilitarian equipment into something more elegant and emotional, while also improving the user experience. This shift in the meaning of what a printer could be was what made the process worth while.
