When they set about to design the form factor for the NVIDIA SHIELD with Android TV, NVIDIA’s designers had several criteria in mind: power, eye-catching appearance, and solid construction. Andrew Bell, VP of the Shield Product Team, and Jason Su, Industrial Design Manager, talked to PD&D about how to make a set-top box that looked different from the competition and could pack all the necessary ports into a thin shape that could stand either horizontally or vertically.

The four triangles that make up the box are inspired by the process of tessellation, which is used to render images in computer graphics. Each triangle serves a different purpose – air intake, outlets etc. and are arranged at different elevations. The arrangement of the triangles also dictates the position of the central light bar.

That light bar was one of the most difficult parts of the project, Su and Bell said. They wanted the light bar to look like an opaque black surface when it was turned off, not a white or transparent surface. They used tinted plastic and a lot of trial and error to make sure it was “NVIDIA green” when on and black when off.

“You measure and you stare at the light bar for 10 hours trying to determine the color,” Su said.

The fading of the light at the edges had to be perfect too, necessitating going over and over it to find hot spots or areas likely to leak light.

Before they could get down to the details of the lights, the team needed to 3D print prototypes to make sure they had the shape and weight they needed for the box. Along with 3D printing, NVIDIA designers also use machine prototypes and a lot of other techniques to get the product ready. They use Rhino 3D to create their CAD files and compare digital concepts. Once they have a shape they like, they move into 3D printing, giving weight and shape to the device in order to determine how it will look and feel as a production part. After the color, texture, size, and dimensions are worked, they move to other types of prototypes.

“We generally do everything from mocking things up ourselves to 3D prints to machining units to get quick turnaround to sanity check the design,” Su said.

There were at least six iterations where the hard drive didn’t fit in the box, Su said. “The box is very dense and managing the interference with heating all the components was a big challenge.”

There they had an advantage because they were in-house at NVIDIA and knew exactly what processor they would be working with. They also knew what capabilities the product needed to have down the line, including 4k capability, gaming, and HDMI connections. “Since we know the chip requirements better and the engineers’ requirements better, we can design all these features into it. So we didn’t compromise in the design side,” Su said.

Even then, finding a balance between size and capability was a challenge.

“I think designing a product is always difficult,” Su said. “The designer wants it to be thin, the engineers want it to be bigger, and the company wants it to be cheap!”

Making a powerful set top box required some inventiveness when it came to heating. Su and Bell’s teams worked together to decide on the location of the fan, which needed to be hidden away so that it wasn’t immediately visible to consumers. They did this by placing the air intake underneath the box and slightly elevating the segments around it.

The outlet is also hidden in the back of the device. Placing ports required a lot of design as well, since the box can be placed either horizontally or vertically. The largest and most commonly used cables – HDMI and power cables – are placed lower than the other ports. Along with being practical – preventing the cables from angling the box upward – this was done in order to make a nicer form factor in which the cables looked centered and symmetrical.

“One of our goals was to make the cables fall away from the design. We spent a lot of time figuring out how to make it appear that there were no cables,” said Su. They used a custom power connector in order to get the needed power into the thin form factor.

NVIDIA’s Android TV needed to look high-tech and fast without falling over under the weight of its own cords or hard drive. Su and Bell’s design teams set their sights on that to come up with their finished product, which NVIDIA hopes will bring television and gaming together.