Jony Ive Discusses Apple's Creative Design Processes

[xinu]

Originally Posted by nikhsub1

I love Apple as much as the next guy but, what product would that be? As far as I can see, all they have done is improve existing categories. Computer, MP3 player, phone, tablet, etc. I am not trying to pick a fight or be argumentative, either I'm being totally dense here (which could be) or Ives is in dreamland?

They are prototyping iCar I would assume. Car industry is big. Apple wants peace of everything that is big. Made of CarbonFibre and aluminium those would last from father to son.

Electric Car with all iOS goodies integrated. Google is doing the same with automatic steering and all that sci-fi stuff.

[*LTD*]

Originally Posted by ericinboston

How are Ive's comments any different from any other company in the world?! Sheeeez...you think of something, you ask if it may be useful/solve a problem, come up with a prototype. Wow! Great insight, Jony!

Uh, what were you expecting?

Ive knows how to shut the hell up, thank god.

[needfx]

Originally Posted by nikhsub1

Sadly it has been sitting in the corner of my living room for about 2 years now It is quite outdated (the computing components) at this point.

I guess all our "beasts" are slowly becoming outdated. got two of them "beasts", one used, one just collecting dust.

----------

Originally Posted by xinu

They are prototyping iCar I would assume. Car industry is big. Apple wants peace of everything that is big. Made of CarbonFibre and aluminium those would last from father to son.

Electric Car with all iOS goodies integrated. Google is doing the same with automatic steering and all that sci-fi stuff.

...with a click-whell for basic operations such as steering, windows, iRadio. Lock/Sleep button to lock/unlock car, usb charging and so on & so forth..

[Clown Boy]

Totally verbose nonsense. 90% of it means nothing. I wish is answers were as stripped back and simple as his design ethos.

Translated read like this:

Q. Hey Jo(h)nny, how do Apple go about designing and making things?

A. Well, its like everyone else, we brainstorm, we prototype, test and then we build. Except we are Apple so we can't say that. We do things differently, well we give the illusion its done differently. And then you fanbois worship us. Lolcatz.

[bedifferent]

I want his job

[blow45]

Originally Posted by Clown Boy

Totally verbose nonsense. 90% of it means nothing. I wish is answers were as stripped back and simple as his design ethos.

Translated read like this:

Q. Hey Jo(h)nny, how do Apple go about designing and making things?

A. Well, its like everyone else, we brainstorm, we prototype, test and then we build. Except we are Apple so we can't say that. We do things differently, well we give the illusion its done differently. And then you fanbois worship us. Lolcatz.

Lol, true!

Hey Jony, how about releasing an imac with great ergonomics too like the G3? We know you are great but seeing as you 've stuck minimally modifying a design for years on end we have started wondering if you are any good.

An imac with great ergonomics and also one that looks good, that's the real challenge, now you can either go for that or dilute yourself in silly interviews where you 're not saying much at all, and making the ipad a bit thinner and or a bit thicker, with or without a frame year after year...no wonder you were thinking of quitting a while back...

[croooow]

Originally Posted by toddybody

Im no blind follower...but

Apple != NSA

Nothing to do with the NSA. He seems like a pretty private person. Running for President puts you on the radar of a lot of media. Ive has a great job and is generally unknown (for the general public, not in the "tech world")

[ganymedes13]

Originally Posted by Truffy

Intense rather than interesting. Unfortunately, what with the Evening Standard being print, the breathless hushed tones of Jony's delivery are lost.

I think it's both how he acts and what he says but, even if you are right, people always want to listen to someone who is passionate about something. Even if you don't know a lot about a given subject there is a greater likelihood of learning from them because that passion is endearing.

[paul4339]

Originally Posted by ericinboston

How are Ive's comments any different from any other company in the world?! Sheeeez...you think of something, you ask if it may be useful/solve a problem, come up with a prototype. Wow! Great insight, Jony!

the guy was just commenting on what he likes about the process.... also, for many many big companies, it isn't simply just think of something useful and come up with a prototype. For many companies, it's often really bureaucratic, you have to come up with a business plan, get marketing onside, do research, then after alot of buy-in, they allow you access to resources to do a prototype.

It's the small companies and startups that have less red tape that can get new things (prototype) done easier... but then they often don't have the resources to go much further.

.

[TallManNY]

Originally Posted by nikhsub1

I love Apple as much as the next guy but, what product would that be? As far as I can see, all they have done is improve existing categories. Computer, MP3 player, phone, tablet, etc. I am not trying to pick a fight or be argumentative, either I'm being totally dense here (which could be) or Ives is in dreamland?

The iPod was more than an MP3 player improvement. It was huge (in terms of storage space), personal, portable, storage for your music. Everything out there at the time held far less music or was far bigger and it was making an assumption that people would drop cash to have all their music with them pretty much all the time. The iPod was super ambitious and it was more than just an improvement unless you just want to call everything an improvement in that there was something like it beforehand. But then you get into saying something like well the iPod is really just an improvement on the sony walkman tape player because it served largely the same function.

But even you have to admit the iPhone was really revolutionary. It was true internet in your pocket made simple enough that the masses could use it nearly instantly. In case you don't remember, there was a time when you simply had an iPhone and the internet with you at all times or you didn't. The other smartphones that folks carried (largely blackberries) couldn't do anything on the internet with any speed that was beyond excruciating. The internet was the iPhone's killer app and it was available from day one.

Finally the iPad took the iPhone and said the realities of human scale means the phone size is too small for many tasks. Let's make it bigger even though we are asking people to carry what in someways is a duplicative device was the genius move. Getting a screen that large, having the battery last, making it affordable and super profitable was Apple's supply chain at its best.

All game changers in my mind.

[Pez555]

imagine being able to see every prototype Apple has ever made.

[SvenSvenson]

Originally Posted by ericinboston

How are Ive's comments any different from any other company in the world?! Sheeeez...you think of something, you ask if it may be useful/solve a problem, come up with a prototype. Wow! Great insight, Jony!

He probably doesn't know how he designs things, but that's the best explanation he can give.

"Hey! Da Vinci - how do you do the great paintings?" "Well, I look, then I dip the brush in the paint and move it around on the canvas. Easy, no?".

[charlituna]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9B179 Safari/7534.48.3)

Originally Posted by FFArchitect

I think many would prefer Sir Jony Ive to present Apple's keynotes over Tim Cook, all due respect to Mr. Cook.

What does Jony prefer? From what I understand he does want to be in that role, aside from an occasional brief demo or making a video. And they respect him enough not to force him to do the task anyway

[gnasher729]

Interesting the difference of starting points:

Jony Ive: "It’s not a problem you’re aware of, nobody has articulated a need. But you start asking questions: what if we do this, combine it with that, would that be useful? "

Open Source: "Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch."

Somehow I think Jony Ive's approach has worked better so far.

Originally Posted by SvenSvenson

"Hey! Da Vinci - how do you do the great paintings?" "Well, I look, then I dip the brush in the paint and move it around on the canvas. Easy, no?".

"I start with a huge block of marble, and then I remove everything that doesn't belong there". Can't remember who said that.

[wikus]

Jony Ive is thew only guy at Apple I respect. Steve Jobs was the epitome of egomaniac with a twisted view of the word 'choice'. Doesnt help that he turned Apple into everything it stood against;

[moderately]

Originally Posted by ericinboston

How are Ive's comments any different from any other company in the world?! Sheeeez...you think of something, you ask if it may be useful/solve a problem, come up with a prototype. Wow! Great insight, Jony!

I think you are missing it completely here. In an industry that is famous for thinking of the actual object last Apple seems to start with how it gets used. How does it feel in your hand or sit on your desk. Is it convenient? How much do you have to adjust your inclination to work with the device?

I think this is why so many of us get so irate when Apple makes a choice we see as awkward or stupid or not the way that makes the most sense to us. We expect them to be better, to offer a seamless experience.

[notabadname]

Originally Posted by meli

Like what? Apple's reputation is for the opposite of this; they improve upon existing products (the personal computer, the mp3 player, cell phones, tablet computers). Though I'd say they improve upon them greatly, not "slightly".

I think the iPad is a perfect example. There were laptops, game devices, netbooks, PDAs and the scattered e-readers. But there was no such thing as a device that did all tasks. And not even e-readers that did more than black and white text. The iPad literally created a first-time product. And only because of the iPad did we get full digital magazines and a subscription system like Zinio, as well as NYT and WSJ to name a few. But someone tell me the single product that was all of these things prior to the iPad. Before then, people carried a netbook or laptop, an e-reader and a Gameboy or PSP, plus a suitcase full of chargers. A measure of creating something new should be how many new businesses or infrastructures it creates by its presence. IMO, that alone proves there was no hardware that proceeded it. The Galaxy is not a new product type, because the games, Apps, media and countless things we have come to do an an iPad-like device (and the economy that provides them) came to exist as a result of the iPad. But before the iPad?

[wikus]

Originally Posted by TallManNY

The iPod was more than an MP3 player improvement. It was huge (in terms of storage space), personal, portable, storage for your music. Everything out there at the time held far less music or was far bigger and it was making an assumption that people would drop cash to have all their music with them pretty much all the time. The iPod was super ambitious and it was more than just an improvement unless you just want to call everything an improvement in that there was something like it beforehand. But then you get into saying something like well the iPod is really just an improvement on the sony walkman tape player because it served largely the same function.

But even you have to admit the iPhone was really revolutionary. It was true internet in your pocket made simple enough that the masses could use it nearly instantly. In case you don't remember, there was a time when you simply had an iPhone and the internet with you at all times or you didn't. The other smartphones that folks carried (largely blackberries) couldn't do anything on the internet with any speed that was beyond excruciating. The internet was the iPhone's killer app and it was available from day one.

Finally the iPad took the iPhone and said the realities of human scale means the phone size is too small for many tasks. Let's make it bigger even though we are asking people to carry what in someways is a duplicative device was the genius move. Getting a screen that large, having the battery last, making it affordable and super profitable was Apple's supply chain at its best.

All game changers in my mind.

This is a draft of an digital audio player (properly named DAP) that was filed for a patent application in 1981, which predates the (overwhelmingly overrated) holy grail iPod by about TWENTY YEARS.



Then of course there were a boatload of other viable mp3 player options even before the iPod, and even more during the early 2000's some of which were far superior to iPods (check iAudio aka Cowon). To this day, since the existence of Cowon, iPods have been inferior, but like the stereotype goes, its true that people go for the brand/logo rather than the functionality. Apple's yet to release an iPod with real EQ settings, battery that lasts more than 40 hours, open source video codec support, a removable battery, decent sound quality (ipods have always scored worst) and my personal favourite; being forced/locked down to iTunes to transfer your own media to the device but not being allowed to take it back without the use of 3rd party applications.

As for almost all of Apple's products, theyve all been evolutionary. When you look past the media hype and the brainwashing thats been done from Steve Jobs' reality distortion field, theyve never really 'revolutionized' anything; they took GUI, the mouse and networking from Xerox, their mp3 player was just a rehashing of the old, almost none of their product's components are their own, the iPhone is simply an easy to use but reliable phone (nothing more).

But I'll give Apple credit where its due;

They really know how to make user interfaces.... DAMN WELL. Their products aesthetic design is amazing. Their software and advertising of their products is as reliable as they claim it to be (unlike Microsoft).

And OS X....

This is what bugs me most. Of all the platforms that Apple's been selling, OS X has been the slowest to take off. People went crazy over iPods. Theyre obsessed with iPhones. And now the insane loyalty and behaviour for the company has been furthered by the iPad (a product which I see as most useless in Apple's lineup).

But the BEST product Apple has had, OS X, nobody even bothers to say 'Yeah, I really like OS X over Windows' but rather you hear people saying 'I want <insert iOS product here> or a MacBook' without acknowleding the fact that OS X is the reason why Apple's *real* computers have been so good.

[nikhsub1]

Originally Posted by TallManNY

The iPod was more than an MP3 player improvement. It was huge (in terms of storage space), personal, portable, storage for your music. Everything out there at the time held far less music or was far bigger and it was making an assumption that people would drop cash to have all their music with them pretty much all the time. The iPod was super ambitious and it was more than just an improvement unless you just want to call everything an improvement in that there was something like it beforehand. But then you get into saying something like well the iPod is really just an improvement on the sony walkman tape player because it served largely the same function.

But even you have to admit the iPhone was really revolutionary. It was true internet in your pocket made simple enough that the masses could use it nearly instantly. In case you don't remember, there was a time when you simply had an iPhone and the internet with you at all times or you didn't. The other smartphones that folks carried (largely blackberries) couldn't do anything on the internet with any speed that was beyond excruciating. The internet was the iPhone's killer app and it was available from day one.

Finally the iPad took the iPhone and said the realities of human scale means the phone size is too small for many tasks. Let's make it bigger even though we are asking people to carry what in someways is a duplicative device was the genius move. Getting a screen that large, having the battery last, making it affordable and super profitable was Apple's supply chain at its best.

All game changers in my mind.

I stand by my statement. Apple has not CREATED a new product category - all they have done is improve (or revolutionize as you like to call it) existing products. Game changers maybe, creating new categories, not so much.

[farleysmaster]

Originally Posted by Magrão

That's Sir Jony Ive, to you!

It's funny. No media in the UK would ever refer to him as 'Ive' now. It would be Sir Jony Ive in the headline, and Sir Jony in the article.

[Rogifan]

Originally Posted by thekeyring

I'd love to see a detailed publication of how the iPad when from an idea to final launch. It's touched upon in Steve Jobs' biography, but I'd love more depth. As far as I can remember, it says that they were designing a netbook, but the keyboards were proving expensive, so Steve wanted to shift the display onto the screen, and make a touch screen keyboard.

How interesting would the rest be? The decision that iOS was capable enough and would work, not Mac OS X; The design decisions that made some consumers look at it and say "Its a big iPod touch"; A4 chips instead of Intel chips, etc.

According to Isaacson's book during an executive meeting where they were discussing a low cost netbook, Jony Ive asked why it needed to have a physical keyboard as that was bulky and expensive, that the keyboard should be on the screen as part of the software (i.e. like the iPhone) and thus the tablet work begun.

[D.T.]

Originally Posted by nikhsub1

I stand by my statement. Apple has not CREATED a new product category - all they have done is improve (or revolutionize as you like to call it) existing products. Game changers maybe, creating new categories, not so much.

Yeah, I’d say they made existing categories _viable_.

Again, using the iPad, there were of course tablets our before, but they didn’t sell well (an understatement...), and because they never reached any kind of critical mass, there was little to no developer interested. That’s an important part of the equation - specs, features, functionality is only a small part, you have to create interest, sales, funnel revenue into 3rd parties (whether it’s cases or apps).

Plus while the concept was the same if you abstract it, i.e., a handheld computing device where you interact directly with the screen, the execution was so poor, Apple’s take on it is almost like a “new” product category.

[Saladinos]

Q: What makes a great designer?

A: It is so important to be light on your feet, inquisitive and interested in being wrong. You have that wonderful fascination with the what if questions, but you also need absolute focus and a keen insight into the context and what is important - that is really terribly important. Its about contradictions you have to navigate.

IMO, that's a good description of Apple as a whole. Their internals are fascinating because it's a company with so many contradictions that it manages to somehow navigate.

For example, collaboration and secrecy. We all know that industrial design is a massive secret at Apple - Ive's lab is locked down, and developers work with circuit boards in plain wooden boxes. Nobody knows anything they don't need to. However, the products are incredibly well-integrated, so there is clearly a lot of collaboration required to co-ordinate things. Ive talks about how we works with silicon engineers and electrical engineers - there's clearly a lot of work required to maintain secrecy.

It's hard to draw (and enforce) the right line between secrecy and information sharing. For me, that's why Steve Jobs was such a great designer - Apple's business is full of contradictions that need careful design to get right.

That also goes for most of their products. If you consider them each as a package, as a complete product, they've often had huge omissions. But Apple has always shown that they know what the essential features are; and they have managed to keep that context while asking the 'what if?' questions that lead to massive innovations that redefine what is expected of the competition.

There has always been great design in each component of Apple's products: from the object-oriented API to the industrial design. But they've also had an amazing designer to look at the whole product as the sum of its parts. I think much of the worry about Apple after Steve is that while they have plenty of people capable of designing parts of products, we don't know who is in charge of the design of the product overall.

The worry is that it'll become a design by committee (even if that committee is made up of great designers in their respective fields).

[Rogifan]

OK, technically Apple may not have created new categories, just improved upon existing products. But at the same time how many people refer to the iPod as an mp3 music player. Or the iPad as a tablet. These names have become ubiquitous. Heck I know plenty of people who don't own an iPod but call their mp3 music player an iPod, just like people call tissues Kleenex or cotton swabs Q-Tips. And I’d also say the advent of the iPhone ushered in the whole app economy. Sure there were mobile apps before the iPhone but I would argue for most people their first introduction to apps was with Apple and the iPhone/iPad.

[sessamoid]

Henry Ford didn't create a new product either. He wasn't the first to design an horseless carriage, but he's remembered as the man who brought it to the world.

Who here remembers who sold the very first digital music player?

Yeah, me neither. Because it was crap. Apple was the first one to bring one to market that wasn't crap.