user research
Ask (interviews)
Interview 1: Trevor
Summary
Trevor is an avid gamer for the past 10 years. He custom built his last 3 computers and is constantly looking for clear and better looking machines. He is a student in Material Science here at the University of Minnesota. I interviewed him first because he has an eye for computer organization and would be able to point me in the right direction.
Questions
- What prompted you to build your own computer?
- What was the most difficult part of assembling the computer?
- What is your current process for routing wires?
- What were you looking for when selecting your computer case?
- What tools do you when organizing wires?
- Walk me through what you have plugged into your computer?
- Where does each wire end up at?
- What else do you usually have on your desk?
- How important is the aesthetics of a computer?
- How often do you upgrade the internals of your computer?
- How long did it take to physicaly build? To plan?
- How early did you start planning the wire management?
- How long did it take you to connect everything internally?
- What is your process for testing your machine?
- When does the final wiring designs fall in that timeline?
- What kind of fashioners do you use?
- Do you change the colors of your wires?
- Did you custom make any wire harnesses? If so, where did you make them?
- In the overall design, should wire management be highlighted or hidden from view? What about wires makes you think that?
- Where is your computer positioned on your desk? Why did you pick that location?
Conversation
The most significant thing I got out of my conversation with Trevor was the importance of straight lines and hiding wires. As you can see from the photo above, Trevor used clips built into his case to pull wires perfectly parallel or perfectly perpendicular with the motherboard, graphics card, and other power cables.
The photo above was taken from the front. Interested, I asked Trevor to remove the back pane of his computer. He was hesitant to show the mess back there, but he obliged.
As Trevor was removing the back panel of his case (shown above), I noticed that interestly shaped knob on the front. Apparently it was a headphone holder. Normally, headphones just sit on the desk or on top of the computer, but Trevor had found a way to connect it directly with the surface of the computer.
After Trevor had removed the back panel, I immediately realized why it was hidden in the back. It’s impossible to know which wires go where, cables were spooled, clipped, unclipped, everything. If a wire could physically do something, it was doing it.
Trevor was very proud of these clips though. The clips were limited, though, and reserved just for the wires that routed to the front of the machine.
Quotes
“Its all about the straight lines. Anything else looks like trash” — Trevor
“Yeah this is a headphone holder. I basically just taped this block to the front of the computer and it holds my headphones” — Trevor
“These clips are really nice for keeping the wires straight.” — Trevor
Interview 2: Ethan
Summary
Ethan is a member of Tesla Works, a project based student organization here at the University of Minnesota. He is a junior in computer science and has been building computers for as long as he can remember. We met in the electronics lab of the Exceed Lab in Keller Hall. Surrounded by both working and broken computers alike and a wall of monitors lined up on a shelf towered over us while we spoke.
Questions
- What prompted you to build your own computer?
- What was the most difficult part of assembling the computer?
- What is your current process for routing wires?
- What were you looking for when selecting your computer case?
- What tools do you when organizing wires?
- Walk me through what you have plugged into your computer?
- Where does each wire end up at?
- What else do you usually have on your desk?
- How important is the aesthetics of a computer?
- How often do you upgrade the internals of your computer?
- How long did it take to physicaly build? To plan?
- How early did you start planning the wire management?
- How long did it take you to connect everything internally?
- What is your process for testing your machine?
- When does the final wiring designs fall in that timeline?
- What kind of fashioners do you use?
- Do you change the colors of your wires?
- Did you custom make any wire harnesses? If so, where did you make them?
- In the overall design, should wire management be highlighted or hidden from view? What about wires makes you think that?
- Where is your computer positioned on your desk? Why did you pick that location?
Conversation
I began the conversation with a lot of questions about wire management. However, during the conversation it became apparent to me that wire management wasn’t a big deal for him. When I first asked him to open up his computer, this is what I saw:
I quickly realized that this was the person I was trying to find a solution for. Ethan is extremely busy, so he doesn’t have time to play games and doesn’t care that much for the aesthetics of a machine. He just wants it to work for video rendering, for artificial intelligence training, and for bitcoin mining. When I asked him about his computer specs, it was clear that he knew what he was doing. No two pieces were purchased at the same time. The 7 year old motherboard was bought used on ebay. The top-of-the-line Intel i7 CPU chip was found in an old computer at a drop off site. The graphics card was the only thing purchased was the Founders Edition GeForce 1070 graphics card (reviewed a top 10 graphics card).
The point is, Ethan is constantly upgrading and improving his computer. He ignores wire management for the most part because it's way too much of a hassle to clean everything if he's just going to change things around in a couple of weeks.
The back of his computer was no better. His case was so big that wires just routed anyway that worked.
I did notice one type of wire management used a couple of times, though. I asked Ethan about his use of zip ties.
While not a fan of zip ties, he used them to keep major “arteries” together. Shown was all the wires that lead to the cases header panel (power button, on light, USB, headphones, etc). He didn’t like using them because he had to cut and replace every time he wanted to change something. They’re cheap, but they feel wasteful. He mentioned using convoluted tubes instead, but hadn’t had the chance to actually use them and was worried that the computer would look too much like a garden hose.
Quotes
“I constantly change things in my computer, so rerouting wires every time is just not going to happen”
“Zip ties are the best solution right now.”
“In this build, I must have gone through a hundred zip ties with all the trial and error of getting the machine to run.”
“I like the thought wire tubes, but they just look out of place. This isn’t a garden, I don’t need a garden hose”
Interview 3: Eric
Summary
Eric is one of my colleagues at my internship last year. He is an entrepreneur and software consultant from Iowa State. Eric doesn’t play video games, but needs a powerful and reliable system for the various high tech project he is working on. He recently completed a new build that is is ultra high performance, perfectly silent, and low profile.
Conversation
During my conversation with Eric, I must have struck a nerve with him about LED lights. Eric doesn’t buy into the whole LED light trend, instead preferring “black, no lights, no noise”, even going as far as spending more money for a motherboard that doesn’t have any unnecessary LED lights. Clearly the LED lighting trend is a hot button issue for many people when it comes to computer aesthetics.
Additionally, Eric didn’t actually assemble the computer himself. He says that assembling computers takes a lot of time and he’d rather “trade money for time”, especially if you want to keep good wire management in mind. Instead Eric paid a service to build and organize the machine for him.
The specs of his machine are top of the line for everything, except for the graphics card. In fact, he doesn’t even have a graphics card. Eric said the onboard video is enough to run his due monitors and that's all he needs. He doesn’t play video games and has no need for intensive visual rendering.
Much like the situation with Trevor, when asking to see the back of the machine, he was hesitant. Even after paying the people, the back was much like the other machines I looked at. Wires crisscross every which way.
Eric claimed that this is usually due to which wire adapters are provided with the power supply. As you can see from above, some connectors are provided for future upgrades, but are not needed at the moment. These are usually tucked away or, in some cases, cut.
Near the end of the talk, I asked Eric how his wires are held up on the back. They actually used a velcro wrap which worked really well and solved the issues with Zip Ties.
Questions
- What motivated you to hiring someone to build your computer?
- What was the process you went through to order the computer?
- Did they ever ask your option on aesthetics of the machine?
- To what extent did they ask about the wiring process?
- What were you looking for when selecting your computer case?
- Walk me through what you have plugged into your computer?
- Where does each wire end up at?
- What else do you usually have on your desk?
- How important is the aesthetics of a computer?
- How often do you upgrade the internals of your computer?
- How long did it take to for the company to build?
- Did the company you went though highlight wire management at all prior to placing the order?
- What is your process for testing your machine?
- When does the final wiring designs fall in that timeline?
- What kind of fashioners did they use when building?
- Do you opt to change the colors of your wires?
- Did you custom make any wire harnesses? If so, where did you make them?
- In your opinion of the overall design, should wire management be highlighted or hidden from view? What about wires makes you think that?
- Where is your computer positioned on your desk? Why did you pick that location?
Quotes
“It took me a lot of case options and motherboard combos to find ones that didn’t have lights — they even tried to put lights on my ram sticks!”
“I want black, no lights, no noise. I found [LED Lights] unpalatable when I was building this one. Everyone has lights on every dang thing”
“I used to do the buy it myself and assemble thing but [assembly company] are nice, know how to manage all the wires cleanly and correctly, and they will warn you of any incompatibilities to ensure no infant mortality”
Observe (part 1)
University of Minnesota, Exceed Lab
The University of Minnesota’s Exceed lab is an open EE and woodshop lab in Keller Hall. In the EE room, lab managers and students alike have rescued and built many computers. Here are some photos of the wire management. I assume many of the students are like Ethan, too busy upgrading computers to construct proper wire management.
One of my buddies in the lab at the time offered to let me see his machine. Here are the photos.
Reddit Computer Building Communities
/r/CableManagement, /r/PCSleeving
To see the gold standard in wire management, I searched the internet for communities of people showing off their builds. Reddit become a really helpful community, and sorting with ‘top of all time’ showed be a great collection of some awesome builds.
Here, cable braids are executed extremely well. Again, this re-affirmed Trevor’s straight line opinion. Straight lines make it look much cleaner.
Here are some really cool products I found that makes the cable management much easier:
3D printed parts is also a very common way of hiding or otherwise decorating cables
Below is the back of a machine. Extremely well done and a really good use of color and custom brackets.
The communities I observed provided a lot of really good references of final goods. Many of the projects shown required hundreds of hours and is the goal of almost any computer builder.
Observe (part 2) Market Survey
Micro Center
Saint Louis Park
Whenever someone asks what computer store to go to, Micro Center always tops the list.
First I looked at the computers they had on display to find any major trends or other noteworthy builds.
Just about all the computers I saw had a glass panel with some sort of LED light inside. It almost felt like the designers of these computers were using the LED lights to redirect attention away from the mess of wires. I began to realize how important LED lights were in the designing of computers. Almost every single mouse / keyboard, graphics card, case, just about anything had LED lights on them. I can see why Eric had such a hard time finding a silent, no light machine. Clearly, the trend for gaming machines was LED lighting.
When looking at the wire management isle, I was pretty disappointed in what they had to offer. Lots of zip ties and twist ties, not much else. Talking to one of the sale’s representatives, most of the wire management at the moment is built into cases. He showed me an example:
These cases have shields to cover up wires, or open holes to drop cables through to the back. Right now the market relies on hiding the cables in the back of the computer case to keep it clean.
Best Buy
Maple Grove
I was hoping to see trends of the normal consumer level* wire management, so I ventured to the Best Buy in my home town
*(as opposed to gaming and high end at Micro Center).
Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of the front of Best Buy, so here is a cool photo from the internet.
It didn’t take too long to find the wire management isle.
The first thing that took my attention was these Flex Guard convoluted tubing. They do their job, but the aesthetics are not on par with the cases or equipment nearby. This is Ethan meant when he said said they would look too much like a garden hose.
I was a little surprised by the next thing I saw. Instead of covering the wires with a specific color, Micro Center was trying to give you the opportunity of cutting and replacing the wires with a different color.
This is incredibly unsafe, voids warranties, and doesn’t actually solve the issues of too many wires. It does, however, assist in hiding the wires which appears the be the only solution to wire management I’ve come accross.
CableOrganizer.com
The Internet
The internet is the best place for build your own computer’s. Since the local market isn’t that high, having physical buildings causes issues for some of the more creative, but non-traditional locations.
I visited the CableOrganizer.com website with intentions of finding the best way to organize wires, both in the front and the back of computer cases. There are many ways to organize a wire, and I’ve selected a couple of my favorites below.
The website is a really good resource for the raw cable management resources. They don’t have any pre-made solutions for computers specifically, but computer cases can be modified and the sleeves put over factory provided cables.
Unpacking
For unpacking, I decided to just write as many post-it notes as I can. I specifically left the colors blank and the order in “random” becauses I wanted to use this unpacking as a method of applying one interview’s ideas to other interviews.
The groupings included:
Physical options
From Zip ties, velcro, to even chip clips, people have come up with some interesting ways to hold wires in place. This section was dedicated to the physical options available.
Concerns with time and effort needed
Some people (like Eric) just don’t have time to put the dozens of hours into routing cables. As a result, there is a huge service based industry on organizing and building computers for you. This section describes the need for easy to use wire management.
Aesthetics
This section was dedicated to how things look. People take an immense amount of pride in how their computer looks, so cable management in a way that is aesthetically pleasing is ultra important.
Major Insights
- Zip ties are currently used for everything. They are wasteful, hard to reach, and don’t add value to the aesthetics. — From Ethan’s Interview
- Straight lines for cables look much better than rolled up or loose cables. — From Trevor’s Interview
- Convoluted wire guards would be a good solution, but look too much like garden hoses — From Ethan’s Interview, confirmed by Best Buy
- LED Lights on everything is an important trend to gamers — From Microcenter
- On the other hand, LED lights are not necessary for high end users. Sometime could be a deal breaker. — From Eric’s Interview
- Current wire management is reliant on a good (read: expensive) computer case. — From Microcenter
- When using a computer case without a window, some people won’t care about wire management. It just needs to work. — From Ethan’s Interview
- Excess cables need to be hidden in the back of the computer. — From Trevor’s Interview
- Think about storing the peripherals as well as internal wires. Specifically, where to hang headphones. — From Trevor’s Interview
- People tend to 3D print or laser cut their own molding. This could be a combination of the nature of build your own computers, or could be because a one size fit all solution for a near infinite combinations of computer equipment is just not possible. — Observing computer building communities
Problem Statements
- Computer builders need a better way to route, hide, or decorate factory made wires because the current solution of zip ties are wasteful, look bad, and are hard to use.
- People who regularly upgrades their computers need a way to easily modify their cable management solutions because rerouting wires every time is time consuming and potentially wasteful.
- Computer builder needs a better way to hide excess wires and unused module connectors because currently the connectors are tucked away or even cut, preventing future upgrades or modifications.