Alumnus carts off IDEA award

Photo courtesy of John Jaqua
SCAD alumnus John Jaqua and his colleagues on the Bretford Design team created a laptop mobility cart to securely store and recharge up to 32 laptop computers.

By: John Bennett

Published: Friday, November 3, 2006

Savannah College of Art and Design alumnus John Jaqua (M.F.A., furniture design, 1996) and his design team needed to find a way to recharge, store and deploy expensive laptop computers and other digital devices in unforgiving — perhaps even hostile — environments.

Were they dealing with desert battlefields? Antarctic research stations?

Nope. The Apple Mobile Learning Lab was designed for use in American classrooms.

“We had to keep in mind that it had to be used by children in kindergarten all the way to 12th grade and even college,” he said. “Emphasis was put on designing and engineering every part to withstand rigorous abuse from the thousands of kids who will be interacting with the cart over many years.”

The laptop mobility cart was designed by Jaqua and his colleagues on the Bretford Design team to securely store and recharge up to 32 laptop computers. The cart also allows the computers to be moved easily between classrooms. Their efforts captured a Silver 2006 Industrial Design Excellence Award. According to www.idsa.org, the Web site of the Industrial Designers Society of America, which presents the annual awards, the IDEA competition seeks to encourage “business and public understanding of the importance of industrial design excellence to the quality of life and the economy.”

Jaqua said receiving the award has had a dramatic effect on the business.

“We have shipped thousands of them since February 2006 and it has generated a lot of interest and inquiries from other major computer manufacturers,” he said.

Since they earned the award, Bretford has been tapped for additional collaborations with Apple, some of which are top secret, Jaqua said.

“The award made Apple and Bretford very happy. We have been given the green light to design and develop at least five more new products from Apple, and I must say one in particular is very, very hot. I can’t say what it is yet, but I can say it has something to do with iPods,” he said.

One of the laptop mobility cart’s features, on the other hand, is designed to keep computers very, very cool. The “chimney effect” cooling design was created to lift heat from the cart, without resorting to unsightly vents or other conduits that would clash with the clean design aesthetics of Apple products.

“Knowing that heat rises, we devised opening up the sides from top to bottom,” he said. “We tested it by loading each laptop storage slot with load/heat testing coils. The coils were wired to a control unit which allowed each one to heat up to the average temperature of a laptop in full recharge mode, which gets surprisingly hot when multiplied by 32 units.”

Another unique feature of the cart is a timer that schedules charging of the laptops to better manage demands on electrical service.

“If you can imagine plugging 32 laptops into one wall outlet at once … pop! The circuit breaker blows,” Jaqua explained. “The timer allows only 16 laptops to charge at a time for one hour, then it automatically switches to the other 16 for an hour, and so on.”

Other innovations in the product include handles that help navigate the cart through classroom doors, the capacity to transport 300 pounds of equipment, an integrated outlet strip to power projectors and other equipment, and an uncluttered design that allows the cart to serve as a podium for teachers.

Jaqua said consulting with educators led his team in new directions and helped inspire the cart’s design.

“We did extensive research with schools. A few members of the team had experience with the earlier predecessors that we manufactured, which helped immensely and, oddly enough, hurt immensely,” he said. “I had to break down the old way of thinking and doing things.”

Jaqua credited his colleagues with the success of the product.

“The team consists of two designers, one being me, and my star designer, Mark Kinsley, who really did most of the work and the original concepts shown to Apple. I communicated with the Apple team, managed and critiqued the product development, and designed the plastic parts,” he said.

The other team members included an engineer who focused on sheet metal, a design engineer who worked on prototypes and preproduction components, an electrical engineer and a marketing manager.