Title: Sir Jonathan Ive: The iMan cometh
Context: The man. The myth. The designer.
Synopsis: Who doesn???t love a good Apple-designed product? And why is that? Yes, yes because they pay attention to detail, and are insanely great, and understand what consumers want and blah, blah blah. But let???s let Apple design iconoclast, Jony Ive tell us in his own words what really lies at the heart of the Apple design process and, more importantly, why it is such an elusive aspiration for their competition. The usually soft spoken Ive does occasionally revert to trite Apple-design-supremacy marketing speak, but there are a few nuggets in this rare interview that are worth the price of admission (i.e. free, because it???s on the interwebs where no one pays for nuthin). The over arching theme appears to be a cultural dedication to design over all other business considerations which ironically then feeds back on itself to become the fount of all of Apple???s success everywhere else. The moral to this story outlines a familiar yet no less reproducible precedent for most companies: listen to your design teams and the rest will follow.
Best Bit: ???[A]s consumers we are incredibly discerning, we sense where has been great care in the design, and when there is cynicism and greed.???
Tag Archives: apple
10 simple steps to becoming the next Dieter Rams-like design god.* (*Omnipotence may vary)
Title: Dieter Rams, Ten Principles for Good Design and a Black Cube
Context: Johnny Ive? Please. Dieter Rams was designing awesome stuff when Ive was crapping in his nappy.
Synopsis: Dieter Rams, in many ways, changed design so that companies like Apple could in fact exist. With a strikingly honest aesthetic and ethos, Dieter???s work at Braun was ??? and is ??? astounding in it???s simplicity. All designers of all kinds everywhere can learn a thing or two about design purity from this guy. And not only that, Dieter Rams has also been kind enough to give us a concise list of 10 design principles for us to follow so we too can stop making crappy stuff. So there you go, 10 simple steps to becoming a design god. You???re welcome.
Best Bit: ???Less, but better ??? because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity.???
You want UX desirability? You can’t handle UX desirability!
Title: UX is 90% Desirability
Context: The word every UX designer wants to hear from their customers? ???WANT!???
Synopsis: Want and need are technically 2 different things. Traditionally things that you ???want??? are objects that you desire because you believe that they can enhance your life in some manner, while something that you ???need??? would be intrinsic to one???s very existence. Truly great user experiences blur the line between want and need, or elevate want to the power of need perhaps. You don???t just want the iPad 2, even though you have the iPad 1, you believe that you need it because ownership of it will improve the quality of your life to such a point that your very existence will be sublimely enhanced (read: need). As UX professionals, that???s what we all want (no pun intended) to do right? Design an experience so visceral that people decide they are unable to live without it. And if that???s not what drives you, continue to enjoy your iPad 1…
Best Bit: ???It [Zune] plays music just like an iPod! Why don???t people get this? I don???t know why people want this one chunk of plastic over the chunk of plastic that I make?!???
Insanely great UX to make your customers insanely happy.
But recently, a simpler more straight-forward approach blew me away. Apple is supremely confident in its product, and maybe more important, the experience design it has put out there. There aren’t many products or brands that could use interaction and interface design as the sole content to carry a TV spot, but that is exactly what it did. It is this focus on design and interaction that has perhaps emerged as the most powerful advertising vehicle of all.
Title: Great Design and User Experience Is the Best Marketing
Context: If you want people to want your product, make sure it doesn’t appear to suck. Or even more importantly, make sure it doesn’t actually suck.
Synopsis: A good product – or user experience – is the best advertising. Rather than trying to get overly cute/edgy/amusing/creative with the ads designed to drive demand for a product, how about making sure the user experience of that product will be so phenomenal, so perfect, that the advertising becomes almost unnecessary. Jeff Bezos (of Amazon.com fame) has been quoted as saying: “Advertising is the price you pay for having an unremarkable product or service.” (Of course that was before he used advertising to sell the Kindle, but that’s neither here nor there.) So in a very real sense, the more time and effort (and money) you put into perfecting the user experience of the things you make, the more you should be able to save on your advertising and marketing.
Best Bit: “When you have a brand dedicated to getting the design right, sometimes that’s all the advertising they need.”

