Tech Beat Apple's design process - BusinessWeek

Actually, the idea of paired design meetings is fairly original, and ingenious. Too often during the design phase we constrain ourselves by what can be done. If someone suggest something a little far fetched, they're shot down for "dragging out the meeting" and wasting peoples time. Having one meeting a week specifically scheduled to allow designers(of all flavors) to present their most wild ideas, without the boundries of feasibility is a great way to push the evelope. The iPhone and MacBook air must have both started this way. Someone had to suggest that there would not be a removable battery, which at the time was a completely insane idea, but has since proved to be brilliant.

I wonder about Apple's approach to Why versus How.

I took Alan Cooper's class on interaction design. The focus was to start with a Persona, discover her goal, and then create the simplest path to reach that goal. This approach seems at odds with some Microsoft products that give you as many paths to reach as many goals as possible.

My impression is that a big Why at Apple is to make the thing a pleasure to behold. This goes beyond simply a Persona's goal and focuses on the means as well as the ends. For some people, an Apple *is* the Pony. The tradeoff is: does this Pony go anywhere, or is it a kiddy ride that goes around in a circle?

This may sound down on Apple. It isn't. I'm typing this on a MBP - my first Mac since a Ci - and the first machine since my Sharp Mebius PJ that is an absolute joy to use. We're going places.

It's not the process, if it were that simple every company would be Apple. Its the people, the culture of the company and the leadership.

Some people mistake process for work, process is simple, mechanical, that anyone barely qualified can come up with, usually it's this narrow focus on process this which kills creativity

Part of Apple's success is that they are a public company willing to forgo short-term gain for larger long-term payoffs. For example, the development of the iPhone (based on various accounts) is impressive because Steve Jobs was willing to hit the reset button on a major product that didn't turn out quite right. The result is a successful new wireless mobile platform instead of just an iPod with some phone functionality.

I am a designer and did not find this in the least illuminating. Blah blah blah. I think Apple just has great leadership, a visionary at the helm, great respect for the power of design, and they hire good people. Apple is so secretive; I read somewhere once that their own employees don't know about certain products b/c Apple doesn't want anything leaked. That they would release any useful morsel of their process would be a surprise.

The missing link between process and a culture of embracing change is RIGOR. ie the discipline to apply a process rigorously without stifling creativity. Good design isn't just aesthetics but the constant application of some process to make the thing better on every level.

Didn't anyone notice the time lapse Apple allows its design teams to do their work. Most Apple wannabes out there couldn't afford Apple's luxury of time.

I am an interaction and interface design student, undergoing formal training in one of the few IxD programs in the US. Apple is actually remarkably retrograde by our standards. Nowadays, most serious practitioners employ "user-centered design," which derives product specifications from close, painstaking observations of user tasks, repeated iterative testing, and constant refinement based on observations of actual behavior. The challenge is to remove your own preconceptions and genius ideas from the process. Surprisingly often, these designs look like nothing special, or even look really ugly. But ask Amazon and Google if they work.