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    Lunchboxes, pencil cases and ski boots: The unlikely inspiration behind Raspberry Pi’s case designs

    Designing a product that may slot in a faculty bag and have a look at house within the workplace or front room isn’t any simple job, as Raspberry Pi’s lead industrial designer explains.

    Some early case design ideas for the Raspberry Pi.
    Image: John Cowan-Hughes / Raspberry Pi
    Inspiration can come from unlikely locations, although it nonetheless comes as a shock to listen to that the design of the
    Raspberry Pi

     case was influenced by one thing as far faraway from the world of computing as a ski boot. “The official case lids have a hook and snap detail, which was inspired by the act of putting a ski boot into a ski,” explains John Cowan-Hughes, Raspberry Pi’s Industrial Design Lead. “You intuitively hook it in and then snap into place.”

    Cowan-Hughes has been concerned with creating the design language of the Raspberry Pi because the Raspberry Pi 2, particularly the bodily instances that give the boards their iconic aesthetics and hold them secure from harm. This consists of
    the latest Raspberry Pi 400,

    which marks the most important shift in industrial design within the board’s eight-year historical past. With all Raspberry Pi units, getting the design proper entails a balancing act of playfulness and class, Cowan-Hughes explains: interesting to youngsters of a faculty age, however equally not too toy-like.

    “As well as making our products exciting and engaging for children, many people also use the Raspberry Pi as a smart home device or a home entertainment system, so our products need an aura of smartness and sophistication to sit alongside the other high-end consumer electronic products you may have in the house,” he tells TechRepublic. “We’ve hopefully blended all of those ingredients together to create a unique design language.” Raspberry Pi went by dozens of concepts for the design of the unique case, at one level toying with the thought of constructing it clear.
    Image: John Cowan-Hughes / Raspberry Pi
    Before it exploded into common tradition and have become a beloved plaything for laptop hobbyists and DIY hackers, the Raspberry Pi was supposed as an accessible introduction to programming geared toward youngsters: much like the BBC Micro of the 1980s.While it has edged in the direction of extra mainstream attraction in recent times – significantly with the launch of the
    Raspberry Pi 4 Model B,

    which now sports activities
    a formidable 8GB RAM

    – its core ideas stay the identical: making computing reasonably priced, pleasant, and accessible to all. In reality, the inspiration for lots of the merchandise are easy issues like youngsters’ lunchboxes and Tupperware-style merchandise, says Cowan-Hughes – issues which are extremely intuitive, understood and faucet into present behaviours that folks discover acquainted.  

    “It’s all about inviting and encouraging people to interact with Pi itself, which is the most important thing,” he says. “The core design principle is around keeping the Pi itself very accessible, keeping the cases hackable and encouraging that where we can.” The likeness to lunchboxes come as a shock at first, however as soon as you’ve got heard the actual fact, it is exhausting to disregard the similarities with the colourful, two-tone case of the Raspberry Pi 4 and its satisfying snap-off lid. Sketches of the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B.
    Image: John Cowan-Hughes/ Raspberry Pi
    Yet there was a time when issues might have gone in a really totally different course. “The first [case] was almost not like a case at all. We just created this simple, usable frame around the Pi so not to obstruct it, and then added clip-on panels,” says Cowan-Hughes.”Because there was nothing existing in terms of the visual language or what we wanted to do, there were about 50 ideas.” At the time, Raspberry Pi was significantly contemplating whether or not to easily make the case clear in order that the board inside was seen. “That was an idea that got quite far, but got put aside because we made it so easily openable [instead],” he provides. “[For] the first case design, there were two others that were in the same race and they fell aside.” SEE: Inside the Raspberry Pi: The story of the $35 laptop that modified the world (TechRepublic cowl story PDF)   Reluctant to cover away a good suggestion, Raspberry Pi has even mentioned making the designs that fell away obtainable for 3D print. “That kind of open-source thinking…I think we will do it, if we have a good design that got away we won’t keep it in the cupboard somewhere, we might make it available for people to print and use themselves,” says Cowan-Hughes.The snap-off lid has remained central to every iteration of the Raspberry Pi case because the early days. Unlike typical shopper electronics, which conceal away their electronics innards and try to hold customers out, Raspberry Pi takes the other strategy: inviting customers to peek inside, tinker with the board and attempt to perceive what makes it tick. “Ordinarily when you design a product, especially for consumer electronics, it’s intended to only ever be used in one prescribed way,” Cowan-Hughes says.  Some extra prototype instances. Raspberry Pi has thought-about making among the unused designs obtainable for 3D printing.
    Image: John Cowan-Hughes / Raspberry Pi
    “It’s usually an inaccessible box and you keep it in that pristine fashion forever. We had to go in completely the opposite direction for this…we wanted a case that invites people inside and encourages play and adaptation. When we are considering the aesthetics and the design of the cases, I think of kids throwing them in their school bags. There’s almost a school pencil case analogy: you buy a pencil case, but then you decorate or adapt it to make it your own.” Even the detailing of the instances is saved to a minimal to retain the Raspberry Pi’s design. “The reason we keep lots of uninterrupted surface area that’s blank is because it’s evocative of being a blank canvas for your creation – a blank sheet of paper,” says Cowan-Hughes. “If we’d designed it with intricate surface decoration or it appeared too perfect, you’d be less inclined to hack and modify it and create something more with it. All of that has been carefully considered, it’s been a fascinating challenge to define the design language of the official products across the range and align it to the Raspberry Pi proposition.” SEE: 
    Raspberry Pi gross sales are rocketing in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak: Here’s why

     (TechRepublic)    Inviting customers to have interaction with and modify the board has been key to Raspberry Pi’s philosophy from the start, spawning an enormous cult following of have-a-go hackers and programming hobbyists which have taken the Raspberry Pi to locations which are largely unreachable by conventional desktop PCs.Really, the makes use of of the Raspberry Pi are restricted solely by how far customers can stretch their creativeness, resulting in all method of
    wacky and great tasks

    from followers around the globe. “We get as much pleasure out of seeing the cases become part of another creation – a robot someone’s made, or going up in a weather balloon – than we do seeing it in its perfect, pristine state as a desktop computer,” says Cowan-Hughes. The Pi 400 is a marked departure from the design of earlier Raspberry Pi units.
    Image: Raspberry Pi
    Of course, there’s additionally a extra critical effort to place Raspberry Pi’s single-board laptop to make use of. During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the corporate noticed
    a large uptick in folks searching for out the Model B

    as a cheap technique of working and finding out from house after colleges and workplaces had been closed.Raspberry Pi founder and co-creator, Eben Upton, had beforehand plugged the Pi 4 Model B as one thing that might fairly
    comfortably take the place of a conventional desktop PC

    for work and research. This was put to the take a look at within the early days of the coronavirus outbreak, when customers flocked to Raspberry Pi resellers to safe themselves a sub-$100 laptop system as mainstream PC producers had been stripped of inventory. With the launch of the Raspberry Pi 400, the corporate is trying to entrench itself much more deeply within the mainstream shopper market. The 400, which provides an all-in-one desktop working answer (minus a monitor) for $100, comes at a time when shoppers are more and more fascinated about how expertise can finest work for them within the new actuality of versatile working. It’s considerably of an odd coincidence that an concept that was conceived 4 years in the past will be so related for the present occasions. “With COVID-19, people’s need to access to technology and computing within the home has increased,” says Cowan-Hughes. “We’re perfectly placed to help support this in terms of accessible space-saving design that celebrates smallness and also price point.” Perhaps much more ironic is the truth that the Pi 400 is impressed by the expertise of the 1980s. Raspberry Pi has made no secret of the truth that its newest board pays homage to the all-in-one programs that ignited the age of house computer systems – and later, video games consoles – once they entered our dwelling rooms nearly three a long time in the past. Cowan-Hughes is on no account the one particular person on the Pi design staff. “The best way of looking at it is that I deal with everything that’s external, and then there’s the internal team,” he says.
    Image: John Cowan-Hughes / Raspberry Pi
    “A lot of the Raspberry Pi team are kids of the 80s and 90s and had that first exposure to computers appearing in the home,” says Cowan-Hughes. “I feel very lucky myself – I remember my grandad getting a Commodore VIC-20, and having that early experience of seeing this new piece of technology and sensing it had unlimited possibilities had a big impression on me. It was probably the start of me getting into product design.”With the Pi 400, with its accessible worth level and dimension, it’s probably going to go to locations the place different computer systems have not been earlier than, by way of youngsters having that early computing expertise. It’s thrilling to assume that our merchandise might assist allow experiences which may encourage a pastime for all times, or put somebody on a path to a future profession.”SEE: 
    Raspberry Pi stocking fillers and reward concepts for vacation 2020

     (TechRepublic)Developing the Raspberry Pi 400 was on no account a one-man job: whereas Cowan-Hughes led the design of the Pi 400’s keyboard case, the product is the fruits of a four-year effort by a number of members of the Raspberry Pi staff, together with Simon Martin, who designed the electronics for the board. “Obviously, there is a large engineering team,” says Cowan-Hughes, who labored for Bristol-based design consultancy Kinneir Dufort earlier than being introduced in-house by Raspberry Pi in November this yr. A 3D idea design of the Raspberry Pi Zero case. “There’s just something about the simplicity and the proportioning of it that I just find nice,” says Cowan-Hughes. “It’s probably my favorite.”
    Image: John Cowan-Hughes / Raspberry Pi
    “I work alongside the internal development team to design the product’s appearance and overall user experience. We have a network of development partners such as Kinneir Dufort who assist with design and engineering and also T-Zero, who produce our injection-moulded plastics.” Most of Raspberry Pi’s units do not take 4 years from conception to actuality, both. “[The Pi 400] was a new challenge because of the complexity of the product, and because we’re furthering the reach into more consumer-friendly products like this,” says Cowan-Hughes, mentioning that even the addition of an influence button was one thing the corporate had probably not needed to think about earlier than. He provides: “With the official cases, we are learning how to improve them with each one we do. It’s an efficient design process – but ordinarily it can be a year from first sketch through to launch. We’re hopefully making each case better as we learn and refine the development process.” From the way in which Cowan-Hughes describes it, Raspberry Pi has a really learn-by-doing strategy with regards to design: if there’s an thought the corporate desires to pursue, it prefers to get a bodily prototype out rapidly slightly than spend hours obsessing over sketches and computer-generated mock-ups.  “It’s about bringing that idea to life and actually discussing whether we think it’s got potential,” he says.A 3D mockup of the Raspberry Pi Zero case.
    Image: John Cowan-Hughes / Raspberry Pi
    “We’re very hands-on with our design process and big fans of learning through iterative prototyping. We try to make ideas physical via mock-ups or 3D prints as quickly as possible. That’s how we primarily assess designs.”Especially with issues just like the case opening expertise and the match of the lid, it is actually necessary that it feels proper and you may solely ever assess that bodily. You cannot do this nearly.” So, what’s next for the tiny, white and red PC that has taken the maker market by storm? For now, it’s anyone’s guess: the launch of the Pi 400 shows that Raspberry Pi has refined the art of throwing curveballs to its ever-growing fanbase. And luckily, its fans are always ready to pitch in with their own ideas and suggestions. “We attempt to make each product excellent, however there’s all the time extra we will study,” says Cowan-Hughes. “What’s superb is simply how engaged the group are. Where they spot an enchancment space they will spotlight it, and infrequently additionally share a inventive answer to assist repair it, too.  “You get great positive feedback, but you also get negative constructive feedback, which is vital for us to create better products.”

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