Red Dot Award | iF Design Award | IDEA Award | Good Design Award

Our team worked closely with the Dell EMC Experience Design Group envisioning and designing the future of Dell EMC servers. After a long and challenging process of designing under moving constraints, the 14G servers have found massive success in the market, garnering six prestigious design awards.

Designing within such a complex environment requires a combined effort of designers and engineers, working in several iterations. Key elements of the design are:

Consistency and Alignment. Buttons and indicators were located at a consistent place on all servers: the far left and far right, known as the "ears". These ears were previously used only to hold latching handles and branding. This opened more room in the device for storage — a valuable tradeoff.

System construction. Traditionally, ears have been treated as an afterthought in design, being bolted onto the outside of the server housing. The new design integrated them directly into the housing, increasing the durability of the device and ultimately freeing up even more space for other features.

Wireless connection. Servers traditionally require a display for setup and maintenance, which involved plugging in a device. The previous generation of servers experimented with a wireless add-on feature; following its success, the new system offered connectivity that is directly integrated and is intuitive to interact with.