Epson Smart Line

An Industrial design and digital product design concept for Epson. Printers can be beautiful and easy to use.

Responsibilities

As the Lead UX Designer, I was responsible for delivering the site maps, wireframes and a prototype for a conceptual printer. Also worked participated in the industrial design phase.

Overview

Printers are bulky and utilitarian devices. In homes many of them live in locations where they can be hidden as much as possible. We wanted to change that. We wanted the printer design to be timeless and pleasing to the eye.

The opportunity

To make the printer as clean and possible the first area we addressed was the control panel. Without one not only the looks but also the function of the printer could be timeless. We wanted to design a printer that matched the modern standard of aesthetics and the material spoke for itself by having the form to accentuate it. We wanted to design a printing app that was not only easy to use but also completing the ID of the printer.

Direction: Keyword extraction from visuals

Clean and simple
Dimension and volume
Minimal
High contrast

Requirements

Epson had a list of essential functions that the app had to perform. These features were later tested at focus group testing sessions.

Ease of initial wireless setup
Print - Print a word doc, an email, and a photo
Capture a document and photo (in place of traditional scanning)
Print, save locally and on the cloud the captured document
Make photo copies
Trouble shooting instructions and notifications when an error occurs

Key features

By using a smartphone to control the printer not only allows the printer to have a minimal design but also enables much more powerful features like editing possible. The focuses were to design an intuitive and simple print experience, empower the user, and add delight to printing.

Print and print settings

Despite a printer's most basic feature, I found a the current Epson print setting page to be confusing to many users. The new design focuses on the essential function on a simple layout.

Settings

The settings of a printer is probably the last area a user wants to go in. I took a rich graphic approach to visualize all the information the printer provided. Also making ink purchases easier was the focus of the experience, which is core to Epson's business.

Scan and edit

A new feature possible on a smartphone app. After capture (scan) the user can edit their image/document and print, save or share directly from the app.

Key interaction

I designed the app to have a 3 dimensional interaction with the user. Since the app controlled a physical object the app also a sense of volume and depth. Depending on where the users pressed the giant button tilts as if it was a suspended piece of paper in mid air.

Demo

Mouse movement simulates the touch

Almost working prototype

Built with Xcode. Prototype was used in multi city focus group testings.

App CMS

App color schemes to match the printer color

Epson blue

Off-white

Cappuccino

Midnight

Design

Printer industrial design

To make the industrial design timeless and minimal as possible I enhance the beauty of the materials with a bold silhouette and used the minimum amount of character lines.