Design for innovation | HP Innovation Journal

Invention defines HP, and the 50-year history of HP Labs exemplifies the kinds of research projects that result in market-changing innovation. The light-emitting diode (LED), the handheld scientific calculator, and inkjet printer technology are among the results of HP Labs research and development efforts. And after 50 years, HP Labs is as vibrant and innovative as ever.

HP Labs was the brainchild of Bill Hewlett, Dave Packard, Barney Oliver, and others who had a vision for the future of technology. This vision was not constrained to humanity either. When Barney Oliver retired from HP, he helped lead the search for extraterrestrial life as senior manager at the SETI Institute. Clearly these technology leaders had potent visions of the future, visions that they believed Labs could help HP achieve.

But as a company that prides itself on invention, HP must also demonstrate innovative user experiences. The HP mission is to engineer experiences that amaze, while the HP vision is to create technology that makes life better for everyone, everywhere. Both of these statements describe the tremendous importance that HP has placed on end-to-end experiences that provide real customer value.

Enter the Immersive Experiences Lab. The members of this Lab design for innovation by considering people first. The Lab’s mission is to understand people and their practices in order to craft the best experiences with future technologies. The Immersive Experiences Lab exists to understand and fulfill the promise of valuable, delightful experiences through data-driven, user-focused solutions.

Intern Alex Ju working with Mirjana, Head of Immersive Experiences Lab

Mirjana Spasojevic, PhD is the driving force behind the Immersive Experiences Lab. She is a tech industry veteran who leads the Lab, and who previously worked for HP from 1995 to 2005. She rejoined HP in 2015 after co-founding Kindoma, a company that enabled children and grandparents to read and play together even when they were apart. She also founded and directed the IDEA team at Nokia Research Center in Palo Alto, a team that developed ground-breaking ideas in augmented reality and mobile technology.

The Immersive Experiences Lab works inside HP to drive the “people first” message in a variety of ways. For example, the Lab hosted industry experts from People Rocket who led a design thinking workshop for members of the Office of the CTO. The first workshop was all about helping a diverse audience learn more about user-centered design. The response was extremely positive: Participants got their hands dirty with prototyping materials as they became familiar with some of the methods that members of the Lab use on the job. The Immersive Experiences Lab also worked through follow-up sessions to explore new ideas, some of which led to field studies of novel technology concepts that will be described in future issues of this Journal.

The Immersive Experiences Lab has an all-star team of designers, researchers, prototypers, and free thinkers who push the boundaries of what HP can do next. Lab members are trained to look several years ahead and design the interactions and experiences that people will actually want to have with new technologies. Megatrends and weak signals of what lies ahead from a technology perspective inform research perspectives.

However, researchers cannot simply ask people, “How much virtual reality will you want in the year 2026?” Instead, Lab team members apply tried-and-true methods and techniques to dig into the details of people’s lives. The results of those inquiries drive design decisions about next-generation interactions and experiences.

Specifically, they use various qualitative and quantitative research methods, cutting-edge design skills, and a mix of modern and traditional prototyping techniques. Lab members develop these skills through academic programs that focus on human-computer interaction (HCI), user-centered design, and other related disciplines.

For example, the Human Centered Design and Engineering (HCDE) department at the University of Washington teaches a variety of courses on HCI design and research. These courses teach critical skills such as how to conduct ethnographic field research, how to design and run interviews, and how to analyze different kinds of data. Alex Thayer, PhD is the Senior Manager of the Immersive Experiences Lab and an HCDE PhD graduate, while summer intern Mia Suh is entering her fourth year in the HCDE PhD program.

Tight connections with academic programs and professors provide a vital way for the lab to stay ahead of the technology curve. By sponsoring the annual CHI conference in 2016, the lab became even more visible beyond HP. CHI is one of the premier venues for professors, students, and industry experts alike to publish and discuss their work. The lab worked together with the HP Sprout organization and ran a booth throughout the conference, which drove significant interest in Sprout as a tool for academic research labs.

The day after CHI, the Immersive Experiences Lab hosted an all-day summit at HP for a select group of “VIP” guests from academia. The summit included a tour of the Customer Welcome Center, presentations from key HP technologists, and invited talks from the distinguished guests. The sessions included a live demo of the ShareTable application (pictured below), which uses Sprout to connect people across distances more effectively. By the end of the summit, the professors and students who attended had a clear understanding of why HP is uniquely poised to deliver on the promise of a Blended Reality future.

The members of the Immersive Experiences Lab understand the value of being connected to the latest developments in the academic world. However, they also understand how to help HP succeed by applying radical ideas and cutting-edge techniques on the job. Patents and publications are important products from an industry research lab. But the lab also works with HP business units to drive results.

What makes this lab special is the focus on people first. Rather than starting with a promising technology and finding applications for it, the members of the Immersive Experiences Lab ask questions about how and why real people might benefit from new tools, new interactions, and new devices. This means asking lots of “how” and “why” questions that illuminate interesting habits and beliefs, rather than asking “what” people might want to incorporate into their lives.

Members of the lab work in ShareTable to collaborate using HP Sprouts

Importantly, researchers in the Lab conduct studies in the real world. They investigate how real people live their lives in all of their messy glory. Again, by starting with people and their practices, the Immersive Experiences Lab determines how technology can improve the lives of people around the world. As researcher and Lab member Mithra Vankipuram says, "We need to get out there, get our hands dirty, and really understand how people deal with all these technologies. We want to know how people handle it all."

This is what it looks like to "design for innovation." It requires empathy for real people, their real-world challenges, and how to resolve their pain points in innovative yet useful ways. It also takes years of experience to develop the sensitive observation skills required to translate information into insights. Basically, it takes a lot of hard work.

As a result of placing so much importance on people first, the Immersive Experiences Lab is pushing the boundaries of what an industry research lab can study. The lab operates at the "wacky edge" of how humans and technology will coexist in the future. And it is certainly true that some lab projects are quite unique.

For example, members of the Immersive Experiences Lab are currently exploring everything from new content creation tools in virtual reality to kinetic jewelry that can crawl across your clothing. This lab has brought together an exceptional team of people who have the skills to answer this question, even in the context of jewelry that can crawl up your sleeve. But the lab remains focused on a central question: "How could this idea improve people’s lives?"

The lab leadership wrangles all of this potential chaos by focusing the team on three topic areas. The first area is "Shaping Future Experiences," which is all about exploring next-generation interfaces and interactions with technology. For example, people are using so-called "chat bots" in a variety of ways today. Slack is popular partly because anyone with a phone can chat with a Slack bot and order food from Taco Bell, for example.

Exploring some kinetic jewelry concepts through sketching and prototyping

But the members of the Immersive Experiences Lab wanted to look beyond ordering tacos and consider what it means to shift from "device" to "contact." In the print world, that shift could help people have timely, useful interactions with their printers. The Lab recently studied how people might interact with their printers using text messages as a more conversational way to connect. As Mithra points out, "We knew we were onto something when HP released the HP Print Bot while we were in the middle of our own study!"

The connection between labs and business units is extremely important, which is why the Lab presented their research on this topic to the Pilots and Incubations team within the HP Print business unit. A member of that team produced the HP Print Bot, which is built on top of Facebook Messenger. As their work in this area proceeds, the Immersive Experiences Lab continues to explore ways to collaborate on important future research topics.

The second area of focus within the lab is "Authentic User Experiences." Projects in this area explore how technology can help people feel more resilient in their lives. We all crave a sense of purpose, connection with other people who matter most to us, and feelings of control over what happens in our lives. Explorations in this area of focus have emphasized minimal interactions that drive maximum emotional impact and value for people in the real world. Early results are extremely promising, and point to future experiences that might involve new ways to use printers and supplies that drive stronger emotional connections among friends and family members.

The final area of focus is "Advancing Blended Reality Experiences," which includes research into augmented and virtual reality (VR). As HP begins offering untethered experiences with VR content, the Immersive Experiences Lab has looked at ways to extend the value of products like the Omen X VR PC Pack. Original studies continue to generate valuable insights that the lab can bring back to business stakeholders, who recognize the significant benefits that can be drawn from these insights.

All of these threads come together because the lab members have a knack for spotting and hiring top talent and eager collaborators. With a team of diverse, talented people as well as top-flight interns from around the world, the lab is working hard to drive real results that matter to the rest of HP.

So what’s next for the Immersive Experiences Lab? Without revealing too much right now, it is safe to say the future is a fascinating playground for radical explorations. Future editions of this journal will showcase exciting projects and innovations from the Immersive Experiences Lab as its members tread that "wacky edge" between what is technically possible and what is actually helpful to real people.

As we look back at 50 years of HP Labs, it is important to emphasize the continued relevance and value of HP’s investment in HP Labs. Not long ago, Labs inventions such as LED and the pocket-sized calculator seemed like pure science fiction. HP clearly depends on Labs to help invent the future, which means the members of HP Labs continue to share research results and insights with business owners and stakeholders. HP needs to address the markets of today as well as the markets of the future. The internal partnerships between HP Labs and business owners are crucial to the success of HP, and to the continued relevance of HP Labs as a potent driver of applied innovation.