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.
Think about that piece of great design that you love. It works so smoothly. There are no rough edges. It has such coherence and every piece seems so logical and obvious.
But of course we know that the process to get to that point is never the easy road. Blood, sweat and tears pave that particular track. Sometimes the steps along that road are big ones. That’s often how you start out as you set your design and product direction and stake out your ambitions. But the really hard slog is all the little steps, often from the middle to the end. Standing firm when it’s so tempting to take the easy route. Yes, so tempting, partly because each one is so small. Does it really matter? Can’t we just let that one go?
But it’s the small ones that add up to something great. God is in the detail.
I was reminded of all this when I was reading Joel Spolsky’s recent post [“A game of inches”](You can read the whole article at: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/06/07.html). As always, it’s a great piece of writing—> watch as he engages you with the story and then sets up the lesson.
Some gems for the article:
Dave Winer says, “To create a usable piece of software, you have to fight for every fix, every feature, every little accommodation that will get one more person up the curve. There are no shortcuts. Luck is involved, but you don’t win by being lucky, it happens because you fought for every inch.” There are thousands and tens of thousands of these tiny things.
It takes a mindset of constant criticism to find them. You have to reshape your mind until you’re finding fault with everything. Your significant others go nuts. Your family wants to kill you. When you’re walking to work and you see a driver do something stupid, it takes all your willpower to resist going up to the driver and explaining to him why he nearly killed that poor child in the wheelchair.
And as you fix more and more of these little details, as you polish and shape and shine and craft the little corners of your product, something magical happens. The inches add up to feet, the feet add up to yards, and the yards add up to miles. And you ship a truly great product. The kind of product that feels great, that works intuitively, that blows people away. The kind of product where that one-in-a-million user doing that one-in-a-million unusual thing finds that not only does it work, but it’s beautiful.
And that’s when you know it’s great software. Ah yes, that constantly critical mind. Find the flaw or blemish, fix it, improve it. Repeat. Until it sings.
In some environments, there’s such a focus on justifying/prioritising every feature and only building the bare essentials that you end up with something that is perfectly functional, but nothing special. Certainly nothing to talk to your friends about – nothing that would generate word of mouth adoption.
Call it the 105% Rule. From a word-of-mouth perspective, it’s virtually impossible to discuss an experience that is 5% better than the norm on all dimensions. People don’t talk like mystery shoppers, reporting diligently on each relevant feature. People talk about the exceptions, the unexpected, the highlights.
The full, interesting article in Fast Company provides a number of interesting examples – home-made cookies at a mid-level hotel chain, grannies knitting beanies for UK juice packaging. It’s worth a read.
Do we champion and strive to dream up and add that gem that’s really going to differentiate? It’s hard at times in some companies…
Most organizations systematically snuff out anything that’s distinctive enough to spark conversation, usually through processes and committees. Would woolen caps for smoothie bottles have survived a committee decision at Coca-Cola? Could a formal market-research process have justified the VW Beetle’s bud vase? (“Our conjoint analysis has revealed that customers’ willingness to pay increases by $112 with the bud vase.”) When people with different opinions compromise, they meet in the middle, not at the edge. But the edge is what sparks conversation.
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.
Great quote from Cordell Ratzlaff, Director of User Experience at Cisco (ex-Apple and frog design, and speaking at the upcoming MX conference in San Francisco):
“One of my pet peeves is with the specialized labels that have evolved within our profession. We have user interface designers, usability engineers, user experience specialists, visual designers, interaction designers, etc. The distinction between these many roles is fuzzy and confusing to those both inside and outside the design profession…I encourage designers to get as broad a range of experience as possible. Design products for as many markets, demographics, product types, and technology platforms as you can. Don’t be afraid to take on tasks outside your traditional role. The best designers I know are good at many facets of design. It certainly doesn’t hurt to know about branding, marketing, business models, and technology as well.”
http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/essays/archives/000926.php
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
It’s always amusing (or frustrating - depending on the day) that companies aspire to have the success of an Apple or a Google, but balk at embracing that things these companies state clearly that they do.
For example, on Google’s Corporate Information page, they are super upfront about their 10 guiding principles. And #1 goes like this:
Focus on the user and all else will follow.
From its inception, Google has focused on providing the best user experience possible. While many companies claim to put their customers first, few are able to resist the temptation to make small sacrifices to increase shareholder value. Google has steadfastly refused to make any change that does not offer a benefit to the users who come to the site:
The interface is clear and simple. Pages load instantly. Placement in search results is never sold to anyone. Advertising on the site must offer relevant content and not be a distraction.
By always placing the interests of the user first, Google has built the most loyal audience on the web. And that growth has come not through TV ad campaigns, but through word of mouth from one satisfied user to another.
The simplicity of that criterion is wonderful. Don’t do anything that won’t provide benefit to users. Let that be your judge. Trust that you’ll be able to make money from solutions that people find valuable.
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.”
That’s from George Orwell. Joshua Porter blogged that it applies to user interface design as well. To me, “insincerity” in interface design is when you don’t truly have the user’s best interest at heart. It will be clear enough.
