v10
Dyson wanted to put their cord free vacuum cleaners on the main stage and claim full-size suction power without a power cord. This was achieved by creating the v10 motor that used a unique neodymium magnet and an eight-pole motor. In return, it produced 290AW, at 125,000 RPM and only weighed 125g. Instead of bending air around a corner, the v10 had an ‘inline’ layout and gave us better airflow efficiencies. The v10 had three power modes: MAX, 2 dots, and 1 dot, so the user had a choice of different runtimes vs the amount of suction they required for the cleaning task. The intelligent motor PCB was able to detect when the airway was blocked and when the filter needed to be cleaned. This information was sent to the Battery Management System (BMS). The mode slider had already been designed with a simple mechanism, but there was still work to be done for the battery and the maintenance user experience.
The Challenge
The biggest challenge was space and convincing the engineering team to place the battery and warning LED’s by the mode slider. Unfortunately there was no additional space to grow the mode slider assembly as it conflicted with precious airflow ducting, so we had to compromise and work with the power systems team to negotiate some space on the battery PCB.
We wanted the LED indicators to be mirrored on both sides of the battery pack so both left and right hand users had ‘visibility’ of them. To avoid having additional LED’s, we put the LED’s in the centre of the battery pack and designed a light pipe that diverted the light to either side. Each side had a diffused UI window with a graphical silkscreen to illuminate the graphics.
We had a difficult time finding a suitable graphic for the ‘Airway Blocked’ indicator and we tested many different icons, including: a ubend, a plunger and a falling rocks road sign.
Through continuous quantitive research (846 surveys across different Dyson offices), the UBend (with pipe ends) proved to be the most effective icon for the ‘Airways Blocked’ alert. We still laugh about this moment as other cord free competitors now incorporate the ubend on their machines.
