Finessing the next generation of desktop and mobile digital-storage products, from industrial design to out-of-box customer experience

Western Digital, the leading provider of external digital-storage solutions, is a pioneer in the field. Founded in 1970, the California-based company specializes in producing reliable, secure, high-performance hard drives for personal and professional use. Its advanced technologies are integrated into a variety of applications for client and enterprise computing, embedded systems and consumer electronics, and its own retail storage and media products. The latter exist in a fiercely competitive and growing marketplace: The industry analysts at Tom Coughlin and Associates, for example, estimate that demand for personal digital storage will reach 9 terabytes per household by 2013.

To maintain its strategic edge, Western Digital was looking to invest in R&D and innovation - and to seize any opportunities presented by an improving global economy. Specifically, the company sought to refresh its popular My Book and My Passport product lines with new releases that would take the hardware, software, and packaging to a next level. WD partnered with IDEO, which was charged with creating in-store merchandising, the graphics and information featured on product packaging (and the “out-of-box experience”), and the communications on the quick-installation guide. The creative team also collaborated on the drives’ industrial design, devised a software strategy, and built a user interface for the backup software.

IDEO’s work, based on real-world observations of product use, can be found in some half-dozen Western Digital drives that launched for PC and Mac in 2009. These features include:

- An electronic label that addresses the work-arounds and consumer needs identified by IDEO during its field research. People were labeling multiple personal drives with Post-It’s, decals, or other crude methods to tell them apart. The e-label allows customers to update the “title” of the My Book as often as they’d like.
- A user interface for the backup software, WD SmartWare, that displays content in easy-to-understand categories such as Movies and Photos and lets users watch the backup’s progress as it happens with instant-feedback color bars.
- A new shell casing for My Passport devices that makes them WD’s smallest (0.6 x 3.2 x 4.3 inches) to date. The My Passport geometry, created with injection mold tooling, is significantly complex and had pushed the capabilities of Western Digital’s engineering and manufacturing staff. IDEO provided significant technical knowledge and support to enable the next-generation form factor. As a result, competitors will have difficulty copying it.

The new features and design certainly have helped to set WD drives apart from the rest. “The external hard disk market is so competitive that it’s next to impossible to buy a bad drive - most of the drives on the market are very close in performance and price,” writes Jonathan Bray of PC Pro. “But the extras you get with a drive are certainly not the same across the board, and the portable Western Digital My Passport is crammed with goodies.”

The My Passport and My Book products are available at Best Buy, OfficeMax, Staples, and other large retail chains.

Project date: 2010