Dilip in conversation with Joel Collins, Human Factors Engineer

As Lenovo’s Chief Customer Officer, I’m deeply interested in what our customers say about our products. To this end, my team analyzes hundreds of thousands of customer comments to identify the top issues for each product in our portfolio. After sifting through all the data, the number one thing people talked about was displays, specifically on laptops. Display was their number one frustration and pain point, discussed more than battery life, the operating system, Wi-Fi, audio, or the keyboard.

Almost two years of display development at Lenovo followed, and the result is our new ThinkPad HDR Display, available in our ThinkPad X1 Carbon and X1 Yoga laptops. I’m really proud of this display and to celebrate, I recently sat down to talk about it with Joel Collins, my colleague and Human Factors Engineer at Lenovo. Our conversation is a behind-the-scenes look at taking a customer pain point and turning it into differentiated innovation.

DILIP BHATIA: Hi Joel, for the benefit of our readers, can you please explain your role here at Lenovo?

JOEL COLLINS: Of course. I am a Human Factors Engineer. Basically, my job is a combination of psychology and engineering. In Human Factors, we take what we know about human abilities and limitations and we apply that to the design of complex systems. My job at Lenovo is to understand our end users and design personal computers that meet or exceed their expectations. More specifically, I am on the Hardware User Experience team and I focus on visual displays. So, I try to make Lenovo’s visual displays look even better. Also, before rejoining Lenovo a few years ago, I worked for 10 years as a professional photographer, so I have spent many, many hours looking at computer displays, and I have developed a good eye for a quality image.

DILIP BHATIA: Thank you. Let’s talk displays.

JOEL COLLINS: Sure. Where should we begin?

DILIP BHATIA: When we discovered displays were the number one pain point with customers, I set a challenge for the team – get me a display that is the best in the industry. I felt there was no reason Lenovo, given our commitment to innovation, did not have the best display.

JOEL COLLINS: I’d just like to expand on your point about computer displays being the number one thing customers complain about. That trend has been around for a long time. Displays receive more negative complaints than any other component, but they also receive more positive comments than any other component, too. This reflects the fact that no matter what you’re doing on your laptop, you’ll be using the display. It’s the component you use the most, arguably more than the keyboard or pointing device. The display is the primary interface, it’s literally in your face. When people like a display, they’re very happy about it but when they dislike it, they’re very unhappy.

DILIP BHATIA: Right, so it’s obviously a critical part of the overall user experience of a product. Joel, when I’ve brought up displays in the past, people tended to associate a high screen resolution as the deciding factor into what makes a great display. I have a 4K panel in my device, so it must be good. A great display is not merely about high resolution though, is it?

JOEL COLLINS: I have spent the last several years with actual end users to determine which aspects of a display are important to the impression of a good picture. It turns out there are many different ways to measure a display’s performance in addition to the resolution. Resolution is important, but only up to a certain point. There’s only so much detail your eyes can perceive – anything beyond that is not noticeable. And as you continue to increase the resolution, you start to have negative side effects. For example, the higher the resolution, the more battery is consumed. A WQHD resolution panel uses less power than a 4K resolution panel, so it gives you a longer battery life. Incidentally, ‘WQHD’ is the nickname for a panel with a resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixels.

DILIP BHATIA: So, brightness plays a big part in display quality, more so than resolution, right?

JOEL COLLINS: Yes, brightness is crucial. It’s a major determining factor of a great display. However, there’s also the amount of colors a screen can display, known as color gamut. Add to this, black level. How black is the black? This is the opposite to brightness, but still important. Then you combine the brightness and black level to come up with an overall contrast ratio.

DILIP BHATIA: Anything else?

JOEL COLLINS: Yes, viewing angle. How does the picture look when you’re looking at the display from a position other than front on? All these factors are baked into any one display panel. It’s the combination of all these ingredients that give you an overall impression of a good or poor picture quality.

DILIP BHATIA: Most of our customers tend not to speak in terms of technical factors though, do they? You had to use a methodology to test these ingredients without relying on people to use technical terms?

JOEL COLLINS: Yes, we manipulate these various ingredients during testing. Two displays might be the same in almost every regard, except for one of those factors. We put them side by side and get people to pick which one is their favorite. What we found was the single best predictor of how good or poor a display will look is brightness.

DILIP BHATIA: This makes sense when we consider our customers use our laptops in a variety of settings. You need a bright panel if you’re working outside or near a bright window.

JOEL COLLINS: Precisely. Our display panel needs to compete with bright, natural light. Of course, if you’re in bed late at night watching a movie, you don’t need the brightness of the panel to sear your retinas!

DILIP BHATIA: I’m glad you mentioned movie watching. A primary reason displays are a pain point is because users are watching a lot of Netflix. Customers don’t say “I want my PowerPoint presentation to look better,” when they evaluate a display. They’re now watching a lot of video on their laptops. They expect this type of content to look great on their device.

JOEL COLLINS: Of course, they’re still using PowerPoint and Excel…

DILIP BHATIA: Yes, they’re getting their work done. However, when people travel for work, they look forward to watching a Netflix show of an evening in their hotel or downloading a movie to watch on their flight home. Our laptop display needs to present two types of content – business and entertainment.

JOEL COLLINS: And they both need to look great. When we test our display side by side with other displays, we ensure a range of content is presented. Word, Excel and other business applications need to be clear and legible, whereas photos and video content need to look accurate.

“You're also getting one of the best typing experiences around, a Precision touchpad, much-improved audio, and that dazzling HDR display.” – Windows Central, Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga Review (Rating: 5 out of 5, Masterpiece Choice Award)

DILIP BHATIA: I remember you telling me it’s relatively easy to present a vibrant, colorful image of a sunset, but if that image is ‘overcooked’ it can make other images appear unnatural.

JOEL COLLINS: Yes, skin tones in particular. We’re all familiar with how people really look, and we can easily tell when the color isn’t right.

DILIP BHATIA: The increasing emphasis on video has created an interesting challenge for battery life. In the past we looked at gaining power efficiencies from other components such as the CPU, but if you watch a lot of video, battery life will be shortened.

JOEL COLLINS: Yes, this applies to laptops and smartphones. Our better display needed a better picture and better power efficiency.

DILIP BHATIA: A need driven by content, from Netflix, Amazon, etcetera.

JOEL COLLINS: The performance demands of video are much higher than displaying black numbers on a white background within a spreadsheet. As I mentioned, there’s a need for accurate colors, and smoother transitions from dark to light zones. As an example, you might have a bright scene that then cuts to a dimly lit cavern. Both need to look great. Put simply, the display needs to do a lot more work. Add to this the pressure that everything needs to look good, no matter what the user is doing or watching.

DILIP BHATIA: Just back to battery life… we’ve increased the picture performance of our new display, but a display is the most power-hungry component of a laptop. How have we balanced performance with power efficiency?

JOEL COLLINS: Fortunately, our new display uses a new technology that allows us to achieve new brightness levels. We can be 500 nits in brightness, but still only consume the amount of power our previous 300 nits panel did.

DILIP BHATIA: For those following along at home, what are nits?

JOEL COLLINS: Technically, nits are candellas per meter squared – it’s a unit of visible-light, commonly used to indicate brightness.

DILIP BHATIA: So, our new display is brighter without using more power. That’s quite a feat. How is this possible?

JOEL COLLINS: Okay, it’s kind of a detailed thing. It has to do with the microarchitecture of the pixels. Basically, the wiring that runs around each pixel is now narrower, which allows more light to shine through. If you imagine a stained-glass window, there’s always the black strip between the colored panels. If you can make those black strips, that hold the window together, narrower, more light will shine through because more of the entire surface is transparent. This illustrates how our new display panel achieves more brightness without consuming more power.

DILIP BHATIA: So, was this a new engineering process that allowed us to do this?

JOEL COLLINS: It’s a new fabrication procedure known as Low-temperature polycrystalline silicon or LTPS. Put simply, it’s a new way of etching the wires onto the glass. And those wires turn the pixels on and off. This material conducts electricity faster and more efficiently, so you can make those wires smaller.

DILIP BHATIA: And that’s the science behind the magic!

JOEL COLLINS: Definitely!

DILIP BHATIA: Commercial clients are still concerned primarily with cost, followed by the processor and battery life. Our challenge is to bring displays into the conversation. People want work displays that match the quality of home devices. When I meet with customers responsible for purchasing, I make it a point to show them our new IPS displays versus a TN displays. Joel, can you explain the difference between TN and IPS?

JOEL COLLINS: Sure. TN is an acronym that stands for twisted nematic. It’s an older type of liquid crystal display (LCD) technology. These displays were groundbreaking when they first came out, but today they are the lowest quality and therefore lowest priced displays that are on the market. We tested the TN displays side by side with newer technology such as the IPS displays…

DILIP BHATIA: IPS stands for?

JOEL COLLINS: In-plane switching, a newer type of LCD display. When we show a TN panel next to an IPS panel, displaying the same photo or the same video, the result is unanimous. Everyone prefers the IPS panel. However, if you’re shopping for a new laptop, it’s very easy to miss an important display spec like this when price is a concern.

DILIP BHATIA: Right. Many shoppers will say, “This laptop is one-hundred dollars less than this one. What’s the difference? I’ll get the cheaper one.”

JOEL COLLINS: Exactly. But if the cheaper laptop has a TN panel, you’ll be dissatisfied with the image quality later on. The older and cheaper TN panels have limitations. They’re not great at displaying black levels. Put the TN panel side by side with an IPS one and you’ll see the IPS panel renders a ‘black’ looking black, whereas the TN black looks washed out or gray. A TN panel also has a poor viewing angle. The picture is legible front on, but if you move up, down, or to the side, the brightness will vary, and the colors will shift or even reverse.

DILIP BHATIA: That’s frustrating for users when they do something as simple as shift in their chair. Suddenly the display looks different.

JOEL COLLINS: Yes. Let’s say you’re editing ten photos and you slowly slouch as you edit the ten, the last photo will look different to the first one. All because your view of the screen changed. A TN display also has a low color gamut. That refers to the number of colors the panel can display. When viewed side by side with the IPS display, you’ll see a lot more intensity and punch from the colors rendered on the IPS display.

“The Dolby Vision display is 100 percent sRGB and AdobeRGB color accurate, which is something I have not seen before in a laptop. Even the NTSC rating for color accuracy is 99 percent.” – Windows Central

DILIP BHATIA: “Washed out,” “dull,” and “dingy” are the types of words people use when they describe a TN display when compared to the IPS display.

JOEL COLLINS: Yes. Our testing across the US and Europe involved a hundred people. No one from that group preferred the TN display.

DILIP BHATIA: However, if you’re an I.T. purchaser and you have to order ten-thousand computers, if you can save twenty-dollars on each computer, you’ll save your company a lot of money by choosing TN over IPS.

JOEL COLLINS: Yes, but when those ten-thousand computers arrive, you’re going to have ten-thousand angry users who’ll complain about the quality of the TN screens.

DILIP BHATIA: That’s quite a picture! It shows that if there’s one area of the computer you shouldn’t short change yourself on, it’s the display. After all, you can spend eight, ten, or twelve hours a day looking at it.

JOEL COLLINS: For sure. Our new panel, the ThinkPad HDR Display, is the best it’s ever been. It’s brighter than the previous IPS panel in our X1 Carbon and X1 Yoga laptops. The new panel is also color-fast. This means the integrity of the colors will remain the same over time. Images will continue to look as good on the display as they did when you purchased the laptop.

DILIP BHATIA: All these improvements, color, brightness, viewing angle, etcetera, are the direct result of innovative approaches to the design, construction, and manufacture of our new display panel.

JOEL COLLINS: Yes. Hundreds of specifications and tolerances. Over two years in the making!

DILIP BHATIA: As an aside, it was interesting to discover during testing that people from different cultures, different regions, have similar tastes in how images are presented.

JOEL COLLINS: Yes, people have different tastes in music, food, and fashion, so it was surprising to discover there is a uniform of opinion as to what makes a good image. A welcome discovery for a multinational computer manufacturer!

DILIP BHATIA: We’re almost out of time Joel. I’d just like to talk briefly about our testing process for the new Lenovo ThinkPad HDR Display.

JOEL COLLINS: Sure.

“The colors on the HDR screen were on another level; the reds and blues were so deep and saturated…” – Laptop Mag

DILIP BHATIA: My brief to the team was to develop a display that is the best in the industry. During testing, our new display performed 5-to-1 better than what is currently regarded as the industry standard display.

JOEL COLLINS: Yes, that’s right. 5-to-1 better than a leading competitor’s premium PC display.

DILIP BHATIA: That means 5-to-1 people preferred our new display?

JOEL COLLINS: Yes. I want to emphasize our tests are blind. None of our test subjects knew Lenovo ran the tests and all the product logos of the displays were covered up to conceal their origin. People preferred the collection of test images and videos when displayed on our new panel.

“Simply put, It's the most gorgeous screen I've ever seen in a laptop…This is one business laptop you'll need to consider.” – Laptop Mag, Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga Review (Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars)

DILIP BHATIA: That’s quite a testimonial! I’m proud of our new display panel, it can do it all. The display in our X1 Carbon and X1 Yoga is ideal for both work and play. Is there anything you’d like to add Joel?

JOEL COLLINS: Yes. Many talented people worked on our new display. I’d like your readers to know about our innovative display engineering team in Yokohama, Japan. My colleagues Ryoji Satoh, Takaaki Sakurai and Jun Miyazaki deserve a lot of credit. They do the detailed engineering work on our displays. I work closely with them to spec different panels for different products. I rely on their expertise and every time I talk to them, I learn something new about displays.

DILIP BHATIA: Absolutely! I just returned from Japan and had the pleasure of spending face-to-face time with our Yokohama team. All of Lenovo’s innovation comes from large teams of people working for years to develop innovative solutions to real problems.

JOEL COLLINS: Yes, one of the many benefits of being a global company!

DILIP BHATIA: Thanks for your time Joel. Our team has taken a customer pain point and turned it into a point of difference – a fabulous display.

JOEL COLLINS: You’re welcome.

Thanks to Brian Lee for the pictures of Joel Collins and me.