This link has been bookmarked by 38 people . It was first bookmarked on 14 Mar 2008, by Joel Liu.
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This refers to a story Lopp told earlier in the session, in which he described the process of a senior manager outlining what they wanted from any new application: "I want WYSIWYG... I want it to support major browsers... I want it to reflect the spirit of the company." Or, as Lopp put it: "I want a pony!" He added: "Who doesn't? A pony is gorgeous!" The problem, he said, is that these people are describing what they think they want. And even if they're misguided, they, as the ones signing the checks, really cannot be ignored.
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The solution, he described, is to take the best ideas from the paired design meetings and present those to leadership, who might just decide that some of those ideas are, in fact, their longed-for ponies. In this way, the ponies morph into deliverables. And the C-suite, who are quite reasonable in wanting to know what designers are up to, and absolutely entitled to want to have a say in what's going on, are involved and included. And that helps to ensure that there are no nasty mistakes down the line.
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Kind of a "tried-and-true" approach to concepting. Where I think Apple stands out is in considering form first, then function (as opposed to form OVER function, which makes for pretty pieces of useless junk).
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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Why was Mr. Lopp willing to share Apple's secret sauce? Because having a process is one thing but having the discipline and senior management buy-in to execute it is quite another. Any number of companies could attempt to clone what Mr. Lopp presents here but I doubt they have Apple's underlying culture and infrastructure to pull it off.
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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.
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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.
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So speaking as a designer, these are *not* good designs. Truly great designs come to seem inevitable, and as such become part of the daily landscape. Apple products are still evitable. And "process" or no, it's still a bunch of crap happening before Jobs decides. If he so much as gets a cold, kids, dump that stock.
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stef mullerApple's design process
Posted by: Helen Walters on March 08
Interesting presentation at SXSW from Michael Lopp, senior engineering manager at Apple, who tried to assess how Apple can ‘get’ design when so many other companies try and fail. After descarticles design software for:ideasbazaar for:mauricetenkoppel (delicious)
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10 to 3 to 1
Apple designers come up with 10 entirely different mock ups of any new feature. Not, Lopp said, "seven in order to make three look good", which seems to be a fairly standard practice elsewhere. They'll take ten, and give themselves room to design without restriction. Later they whittle that number to three, spend more months on those three and then finally end up with one strong decision.
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