In an interview with Steve Job’s about the iPod’s approaching 5 year birthday:
What was the design lesson of the iPod?
Look at the design of a lot of consumer products—they’re really complicated surfaces. We tried make something much more holistic and simple. When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can oftentimes arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don’t put in the time or energy to get there. We believe that customers are smart, and want objects which are well thought through.
Here’s an article about my favourite designer, Jonathan Ive, Snr VP of Industrial Design at Apple.
What I like most, besides the perfectionist streaks, is the glimpses into their design team process and culture:
The man who, after Jobs, is most responsible for Apple’s amazing ability to dazzle and delight with its famous products, chose instead to talk about process—what he called “the craft of design.” He spoke passionately about his small team and how they work together. He talked about focusing on only what is important and limiting the number of projects. He spoke about having a deep understanding of how a product is made: its materials, its tooling, its purpose. Mostly, he focused on the need to care deeply about the work.
“One of the hallmarks of the team I think is this sense of looking to be wrong,” said Ive at Radical Craft. “It’s the inquisitiveness, the sense of exploration. It’s about being excited to be wrong because then you’ve discovered something new.”
We’ve seen it again and again. Every company wants to be an innovator. They’ll stick an Apple logo up as an exemplar organisation. Everyone wants to have the iPod of their product category.
But of course you have to do the things that Apple does to get their results. And that is often very hard, and involves change. Hell, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it. But just like eating well and exercising regularly to lose weight, it isn’t rocket surgery either. And one of the key things Apple does is give prime attention to design.
Here’s an article about design at Apple.
It’s only a few pages and worth a read, but here are my fave gems quotes:
On spending design time up-front:
…today Apple spends 15 to 20 percent of its industrial-design time on concept—far more than most other computer companies—and the rest on implementation.
On design-by-commitee and consensus design:
[Apple’s former process] was a consultative process – many different points of view and impressions were solicited. But this can lead to a lack of cohesion in the product, when you find yourself asking another manager, ‘What are you adding in?’ … you’d get a cascade of people responsible for various factors injecting their concerns. … The businessman wants to create something for everyone, which leads to products that are middle of the road. It becomes about consensus, and that’s why you rarely see the spark of genius.
On having a singular design vision:
Critical to Apple’s success in design is the way [Steve] Jobs brought focus and discipline to the product teams. [Jobs] had a single, cohesive image of the final product and would not allow any deviation, no matter how promising a new proposed feature appeared to be, no matter how much the team complained. Other companies are more democratic, listening to everyone’s opinions, and the result is bloat and a lack of cohesion.
On keeping features out:
The hardest part of design, especially consumer electronics, is keeping features out. Simplicity is in itself a product differentiator, and pursuing it can lead to innovation. The most fundamental thing about Apple that’s interesting is that they’re just as smart about what they don’t do. Great products can be made more beautiful by omitting things.
On clarity of vision and the difference between Apple and Sony:
[Apple’s design team’s] a small team that takes a very, very hands-on approach. Compared with Sony: the process of approval, and collaboration generally—for everything from shape to engineering—involves tons of people, taking up to 50 percent of the time, watering it down. What makes Apple Apple and not Sony is clarity of voice and vision.
In the recent joint Steve Jobs and Bill Gates interview they were asked about that they most admire of the other. I think the answer is a good summary of the differences of the two companies and their products, and what you get if you’re frame of reference and driving point is ultimately about people and the products that will make sense and be needed by them.
Bill of Steve:
“Oh, I’d give a lot of have Steve’s taste. He has natural, intuitive taste both for people and products. We sat in Mac software reviews where there were questions about software choices – how things would be done – and I’d hear an engineering question because that’s just how much mind works – and I’d see Steve make the decision based on a sense of people and product that is even hard for me to explain. The way he does things is just different and in that sense is just magical.”
Steve of Bill:
Microsoft’s ability to partner with other companies.
Sites redesign and launch. We go “oh! ah!” at the pretty bits. File the really clever bits away for future designs of our own. But sometimes we miss the really impressive stuff.
apple.com has resisted the Jakob approved convention of having search in the top right of each page for years, so when a search box appeared there in their new global navigation header, I thought they were just playing catch-up.
But then I used it. Yeah, I know: useful search on a website. Sure. Whatever.
Oh wow! Just like their Mac desktop Spotlight tool, only for the web. It’s really beautiful. You’ve gotta try. The pictures, the categorisation, the responsiveness, the direct links to the store, the full results page. Search for an Apple product, technology, or even a movie.
As designers there is a careful line to walk between taking over a design, disempowering our stakeholders and often losing our voice at the table, and being limp lettuce – merely executing the instructions of others.
But how do you find that sweet-spot?
Here’s an insightful quote from Jonathan Ive, (VP Industrial Design at Apple) from AIXS magazine. And it starts with one of my favourite characteristics – inquisitiveness.
Q: What is important for designers in a company that has been as successful as Apple?
A: Being inquisitive. Being genuinely interested in learning and being genuinely interested in being proved to be wrong. If someone says something just can’t be done you have to learn a lot to have an intelligent debate to find out whether that really is the case or not. You can’t confuse dogma with being resolute. You have to maintain the sprit of inquiry. You mustn’t get stuck on a particular approach in the early stages of your idea but you have to be resolute as you start to refine an idea so that it can make the transition from just an idea into a real product.
Here’s a nice little piece of design by Apple. If you are browsing their site, you can be asked to complete a site satisfaction survey – pretty standard stuff.
But instead of popping up the survey and interrupting what you are doing, this one displays a message on your page firstly inviting you to complete the survey and then, if you accept, letting you know that “The survey is available under your current browser window. Please wait until after you have completed your visit to take the survey.”
A tweak to this may be to add an option such as: “Having trouble doing what you came to the site for? Tell us by taking the survey now”, which brings the survey to the front. (As former Sensis web analytics expert Jenni Lock points out,) Sometimes we are particularly keen on capturing in-the-moment difficulty and how that affects satisfaction.
Here’s an interesting article comparing Braun’s product design in the 60s with Apple’s design now. There’s a follow-up article along similar lines.
Whilst I’m sure there’s been some direct “inspiration” happening (see the calculator in the second link), I think it also highlights working to a common set of principles for what good design is – something just as relevant to us today as it was then.
When you look at the Braun products by Dieter Rams—many of them at New York’s MoMA—and compare them to Jonathan Ive’s work at Apple, you can clearly see the similarities in their philosophies way beyond the sparse use of color, the selection of materials and how the products are shaped around the function with no artificial design, keeping the design “honest.” [BC: One of my personal favourites.]
This passion for “simplicity” and “honest design” that is always declared by Ive whenever he’s interviewed or appears in a promo video, is at the core of Dieter Rams’ 10 principles for good design:
Good design:
- is innovative
- makes a product useful
- is unobtrusive
- is honest
- is durable
- is consequent to the last detail
- is concerned with the environment
- is as little design as possible
Edward Tufte’s critique of the iPhone interface has been out for a while now, but 3 thoughts continue to come back to me as I design:
“To clarify, add detail”
“Clutter and overload are not an attribute of information, they are failures of design. If the information is in choas, don’t start throwing out information, fix the design.”
Strive to reduce/eliminate the admin fluff and as much as possible let the information be the interface
This site’s like 70s porn for Mac fans. It shows all Apple’s print advertising from 1976 to 2002.
2 things particularly struck me:
Even in the early days, there was a clear focus on the end value and experience, rather than technical details.
The noticeable dip in the simplicity and clarity of the messages in the intra-Jobsian years. The contrast in particularly striking when you hit the iMac and iBook ads.
