"You can have it Steve Jobs' way or you can have it your way," said Dell's Ed Boyd, vp of consumer experience design at the world's No. 2 PC maker.
Apple products may be well known for their design attributes, but Boyd and his team are on a mission to turn Dell's products into devices renowned for artistic self-expression. Wearing a T-shirt that read Design Will Change the World, Boyd was in New York last week to promote the third, and latest, iteration of Dell's Design Studio, a customization program that allows customers to personalize purchases online with artwork commissioned from talent around the globe.
The 44-year-old joined Dell a little over two years ago after an 11-year run at Nike. His team's quest, he said, is to deliver the most personalized products in the world.
"What you're seeing now is just the tip of the iceberg," said Boyd. "We're working on fully customizing the outside [of our products] as well as the way [they] work."
Design Studio launched in December 2008 when Dell, working with Mother New York, launched what Boyd described as a "U.S.-centric" test. Custom colors and 100 pieces of art from eight artists were available for Inspiron laptops. The quarterly initiative added more images in the spring.
Now, Dell offers the full range of Studio and Inspiron laptops for personalization. There are more than 350 images from which to choose from 25 artists and branding partners, including 100 images exclusive to Dell. The new branding partners include Major League Baseball, (Product) Red and OPI nail polish.
Since the laptops are being custom-built, said Boyd, "we have a much wider array of art available than if we were sitting on a large stock of art and hoping it would sell."
The importance of customization goes back to the company's beginnings, he said, when "it was really about getting a product that could do what you wanted it to do." In updating this idea, Dell realized, he added, that "it's not just what's under the hood, but the whole experience."
The art is applied with Dell technology that imprints the computer with a sub-surface image that penetrates the shell and wraps around the laptop. It's analogous to the difference between a tattoo and a temporary tattoo, said Paul Malmstrom, cd and partner at Mother, whose design group contributed many of the new patterns.
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