Notion Ink Tells The Adam Design Story

While we obviously love gadgets here at SlashGear, we also love hearing from the designers and engineers responsible for creating them and the decisions they make during the design process.  We've been following the Notion Ink Adam since its first curvy render, and now project lead Rohan Shravan is sharing some of the choices and thoughts behind the Pixel Qi slate's form-factor evolution.

There are plenty of seemingly minor details which add up to a better user experience; for instance, the curved section at the top of the slate allows Notion Ink to use traditional 3-cell batteries rather than a more expensive proprietary pack, as well as giving the user something to hold on to.  However it also means there's space for the speakers to be on the side, rather than the bottom, for improved clarity of sound, and it lifts the screen to a more usable angle when the Adam is placed on a table.

Shravan also talks about the choice of 4:3 versus 16:9 aspect displays (the iPad uses the former, the Adam has the latter) and why he believes that there are significant benefits for not following Apple's path in that respect, too.  Yes, we'd rather have an Adam tablet in our hands and find all this stuff out ourselves, but from a purely geeky perspective this makes for good weekend reading.

[Thanks Bart!]