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Jonathan Ive on Apple's Design Process and Product Philosophy

77 points by trauco 12y ago

mattsahr 12y ago
IT is hard to sound more bland than a politician on a softball morning news show. But Ive has done it.
jamra 12y ago
He didn't say anything about process at all. He just reiterated that you must focus on the product.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- grinich 12y ago
  That's the process.
  - mikevm 12y ago
    What else would you be focusing on when you're working on a product?
    - grrowl 12y ago
      In the case of Samsung, the opposition's products; in the case of [past] Microsoft, the users; in the case of Facebook, the advertising revenue. At my day job I'm focussed on what's best for the client, not the website or the client's product itself; such is agency life. When I'm at home I can put away the compromises and make the best damn $thing ever made.
    - alexqgb 12y ago
      GM, in the bad-old-days of planned obsolescence, was focused on screwing their customers. The F-35 program is designed to extract as much money as humanly possible from the US Treasury. There are pharmaceuticals designed the same way. In tandem with lobbyist-penned laws that (a) ban Medicare from negotiating drug prices and (b) ban them from refusing any treatment deemed "medically necessary" they are patent-protected pipelines for moving taxpayer dollars into offshore accounts that are (unsurprisingly) tax free. The list goes on.
- baconstrp 12y ago
  Yes, he meant him focusing on process is the Apple process.
justsee 12y ago
> This is part of Steve’s legacy. Deep in the culture of Apple is this sense and understanding of design, developing and making. Form and the material and process – they are beautifully intertwined – completely connected. This is also true of modern web design. It's easy to work out which designers embody it: * old-school designer - is still slinging over PSDs with little concern or consideration around multiple screens, technical limitations (is there a webfont available for the typeface(s) etc). Doesn't embody the philosophy Ive expresses. * modern web designer - provides designs as static HTML, necessary to reveal the 'developing and making' considerations around assets, responsive design experiences etc. Definitely embodies the philosophy Ive expresses.
- mantraxB 12y ago
  I'm sure you can make your trivial point about the intricacies of web design without having to piggyback on Jonathan Ive's interview. For the record, a lot of the UI prototyping at Apple is done in Photoshop. It's also done on paper napkins, in Keynote, in Illustrator, in Xcode and with whatever works. Good designers don't judge you based on what tools you use, and they're not picky about what tools they use. They'd use anything. The important part is how you think. You can think about all sorts of screens and devices and do it in Photoshop. You can also produce unusable trite crap in static HTML.
  - jshen 12y ago
    It's much harder to do it in photoshop for things like responsive design. Responsive is dynamic and fluid and it's very difficult to capture that in a few static comps. I like this point about web design is very relevant to Ive's point. Apple isn't perfect, and the fact that Apple does web design a certain way doesn't mean other ways aren't clearly better and closer to the values Ive is discussing. Trying to use apple.com on your phone should lead one to the conclusion that apple isn't doing modern web design well.
    - coldtea 12y ago
      >It's much harder to do it in photoshop for things like responsive design. Then again responsive in the web is a co-out and a fad -- instead of creating the best experience for each screen size, you give them some sliding or expanding divs and some dissapearing elements from the "full-on" design and call it a day. I've never seen a responsive page I like on a mobile device. I'd take the full page, in which I can pan and zoom, anytime.
Dwolb 12y ago
The biggest question I have is does Apple do user testing? Do they trust their small group of designers more than a small sample of the population? This my biggest question for Apple's design team.
- mantraxB 12y ago
  They do user testing.
  - Dwolb 12y ago
    I guess my question is if there's a disagreement between user testing results and the product development team's own choices, who wins?
    - mantraxB 12y ago
      Part of being an intelligent person is the ability to make the best call based on all available information. There's no general rule. I'll just say that fast iteration is key. You iterate quickly and show users prototypes, and incorporate their feedback (or not), depending on the case. You can see the "Fake it till you make it" WWDC session on Apple's site, it speaks exactly about how Apple does prototyping and user testing.
  - whoa-duder 12y ago
    Better to call it "usability testing" because you're testing the system NOT the user.
pistle 12y ago
Seriously, Apple PR via third-party technique? This is just a derivative of the previous NYT fluff piece which might as well be written by Apple.
- coldtea 12y ago
  Actually, the previous NYT piece was a hit-piece on Tim Cook, full of BS and snark. Also "PR via third party"? It's an interview. Did you really expect him to badmouth Apple in it?
leeoniya 12y ago
some may find this interesting: http://theultralinx.com/2014/03/dieter-rams-inspired-apple-products.html http://theultralinx.com/2014/03/dieter-rams-inspired-apple-p...
moeedm 12y ago
Ive is the real deal. You can't fake this shit.
petilon 12y ago
It is interesting to note that Jony Ive thinks "the change isn't perhaps as dramatic as you might assume." I would like to point out that people outside Apple don't necessarily share this opinion. Here are some quotes from some prominent people in the Apple community: The Verge wrote: "iOS 7 isn't harder to use, just less obvious. That's a momentous change: iOS used to be so obvious." In iOS 7 basic usability features such as making buttons look like buttons are now stuffed under Accessibility options. About this, Tumblr co-founder Marco Arment wrote: "If iOS 8 can’t remove any of these options, it's a design failure." (And iOS 8 hasn't.) Michael Heilemann, Interface Director at Squarespace wrote, "when I look at [iOS 7 beta] I see anti-patterns and basic mistakes that should have been caught on the whiteboard before anyone even began thinking about coding it." And famed blogger John Gruber said this about iOS 7: "my guess is that [Steve Jobs] would not have supported this direction." Enough said.
- mwfunk 12y ago
  I don't see how your second paragraph supports your first. Your second paragraph is just a bunch of quotes from various people who had mixed feelings about iOS 7. That doesn't say anything definitive about iOS 7, much less the company itself.
- alayne 12y ago
  You cherry-picked a bunch of old quotes from last year that don't accurately represent any of the people quoted. "It’s a great time to be an iOS developer." Marco Arment, June 6, 2014
  - petilon 12y ago
    It is indeed a great time to be an iOS developer. I love Swift, technologies such as Scene Kit and so on. But that doesn't mean iOS doesn't have some real usability problems. Some of them are documented here: http://uxcritique.tumblr.com/ http://uxcritique.tumblr.com/
- sk5t 12y ago
  I'm puzzled that anyone at Squarespace would feel entitled to criticize iOS 7. In my considerable experience using Squarespace, never have I found more than a handful of its features clear and DWIM-ish.
qself 12y ago
Ive is a tool and Steve Jobs used it well.

77 points by trauco 12y ago

mattsahr 12y ago

IT is hard to sound more bland than a politician on a softball morning news show. But Ive has done it.

jamra 12y ago

He didn't say anything about process at all. He just reiterated that you must focus on the product.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
grinich 12y ago
That's the process.
- mikevm 12y ago
  What else would you be focusing on when you're working on a product?
  - grrowl 12y ago
    In the case of Samsung, the opposition's products; in the case of [past] Microsoft, the users; in the case of Facebook, the advertising revenue. At my day job I'm focussed on what's best for the client, not the website or the client's product itself; such is agency life. When I'm at home I can put away the compromises and make the best damn $thing ever made.
  - alexqgb 12y ago
    GM, in the bad-old-days of planned obsolescence, was focused on screwing their customers. The F-35 program is designed to extract as much money as humanly possible from the US Treasury. There are pharmaceuticals designed the same way. In tandem with lobbyist-penned laws that (a) ban Medicare from negotiating drug prices and (b) ban them from refusing any treatment deemed "medically necessary" they are patent-protected pipelines for moving taxpayer dollars into offshore accounts that are (unsurprisingly) tax free. The list goes on.
baconstrp 12y ago
Yes, he meant him focusing on process is the Apple process.

justsee 12y ago

> This is part of Steve’s legacy. Deep in the culture of Apple is this sense and understanding of design, developing and making. Form and the material and process – they are beautifully intertwined – completely connected. This is also true of modern web design. It's easy to work out which designers embody it: * old-school designer - is still slinging over PSDs with little concern or consideration around multiple screens, technical limitations (is there a webfont available for the typeface(s) etc). Doesn't embody the philosophy Ive expresses. * modern web designer - provides designs as static HTML, necessary to reveal the 'developing and making' considerations around assets, responsive design experiences etc. Definitely embodies the philosophy Ive expresses.

mantraxB 12y ago
I'm sure you can make your trivial point about the intricacies of web design without having to piggyback on Jonathan Ive's interview. For the record, a lot of the UI prototyping at Apple is done in Photoshop. It's also done on paper napkins, in Keynote, in Illustrator, in Xcode and with whatever works. Good designers don't judge you based on what tools you use, and they're not picky about what tools they use. They'd use anything. The important part is how you think. You can think about all sorts of screens and devices and do it in Photoshop. You can also produce unusable trite crap in static HTML.
- jshen 12y ago
  It's much harder to do it in photoshop for things like responsive design. Responsive is dynamic and fluid and it's very difficult to capture that in a few static comps. I like this point about web design is very relevant to Ive's point. Apple isn't perfect, and the fact that Apple does web design a certain way doesn't mean other ways aren't clearly better and closer to the values Ive is discussing. Trying to use apple.com on your phone should lead one to the conclusion that apple isn't doing modern web design well.
  - coldtea 12y ago
    >It's much harder to do it in photoshop for things like responsive design. Then again responsive in the web is a co-out and a fad -- instead of creating the best experience for each screen size, you give them some sliding or expanding divs and some dissapearing elements from the "full-on" design and call it a day. I've never seen a responsive page I like on a mobile device. I'd take the full page, in which I can pan and zoom, anytime.

Dwolb 12y ago

The biggest question I have is does Apple do user testing? Do they trust their small group of designers more than a small sample of the population? This my biggest question for Apple's design team.

mantraxB 12y ago
They do user testing.
- Dwolb 12y ago
  I guess my question is if there's a disagreement between user testing results and the product development team's own choices, who wins?
  - mantraxB 12y ago
    Part of being an intelligent person is the ability to make the best call based on all available information. There's no general rule. I'll just say that fast iteration is key. You iterate quickly and show users prototypes, and incorporate their feedback (or not), depending on the case. You can see the "Fake it till you make it" WWDC session on Apple's site, it speaks exactly about how Apple does prototyping and user testing.
- whoa-duder 12y ago
  Better to call it "usability testing" because you're testing the system NOT the user.

pistle 12y ago

Seriously, Apple PR via third-party technique? This is just a derivative of the previous NYT fluff piece which might as well be written by Apple.

coldtea 12y ago
Actually, the previous NYT piece was a hit-piece on Tim Cook, full of BS and snark. Also "PR via third party"? It's an interview. Did you really expect him to badmouth Apple in it?

leeoniya 12y ago

some may find this interesting: http://theultralinx.com/2014/03/dieter-rams-inspired-apple-products.html http://theultralinx.com/2014/03/dieter-rams-inspired-apple-p...

moeedm 12y ago

Ive is the real deal. You can't fake this shit.

petilon 12y ago

It is interesting to note that Jony Ive thinks "the change isn't perhaps as dramatic as you might assume." I would like to point out that people outside Apple don't necessarily share this opinion. Here are some quotes from some prominent people in the Apple community: The Verge wrote: "iOS 7 isn't harder to use, just less obvious. That's a momentous change: iOS used to be so obvious." In iOS 7 basic usability features such as making buttons look like buttons are now stuffed under Accessibility options. About this, Tumblr co-founder Marco Arment wrote: "If iOS 8 can’t remove any of these options, it's a design failure." (And iOS 8 hasn't.) Michael Heilemann, Interface Director at Squarespace wrote, "when I look at [iOS 7 beta] I see anti-patterns and basic mistakes that should have been caught on the whiteboard before anyone even began thinking about coding it." And famed blogger John Gruber said this about iOS 7: "my guess is that [Steve Jobs] would not have supported this direction." Enough said.

mwfunk 12y ago
I don't see how your second paragraph supports your first. Your second paragraph is just a bunch of quotes from various people who had mixed feelings about iOS 7. That doesn't say anything definitive about iOS 7, much less the company itself.
alayne 12y ago
You cherry-picked a bunch of old quotes from last year that don't accurately represent any of the people quoted. "It’s a great time to be an iOS developer." Marco Arment, June 6, 2014
- petilon 12y ago
  It is indeed a great time to be an iOS developer. I love Swift, technologies such as Scene Kit and so on. But that doesn't mean iOS doesn't have some real usability problems. Some of them are documented here: http://uxcritique.tumblr.com/ http://uxcritique.tumblr.com/
sk5t 12y ago
I'm puzzled that anyone at Squarespace would feel entitled to criticize iOS 7. In my considerable experience using Squarespace, never have I found more than a handful of its features clear and DWIM-ish.

qself 12y ago

Ive is a tool and Steve Jobs used it well.