Introduction
Apple, design, and Steve Jobs.
It's safe to say that you have probably had a firsthand experience with an Apple product or service—and that you have had a deeper experience over the past three decades with a succession of products created by one of the world's most valuable companies. It's also safe to say that you have visited an Apple Store—many times perhaps, to buy or browse or just to gawk in wonder—or have logged onto the Apple website.
If you're like many people, you talk about the product, whether a Mac, an iPod, an iPhone, or an iPad, and the experience with Apple itself as if they were an important relationship. There is a reason for that.
The iPhone 4S brought voice recognition and smarts to life through Siri—another Apple innovation that makes technology feel more human. Image: Apple Inc.
Whether you're a trained creative professional or someone without even a passing interest in the world of design, you will have noticed that everything Apple does has an approachable simplicity and purity that sets it apart from most other technology companies in the world. There is a discipline and consistency in everything Apple creates and a relentless drive toward innovation. How iPads or iPhones function and interact with the user, and how easily they operate, is just as noteworthy as the refined look, the attention to details, and the touchability of their surfaces. For all this, you can blame design.
In other words, what you are experiencing when you turn on your iPhone is the power of design. You can see and experience design in the product, and, as I will explain in this book, you will see and experience design in the company itself. Design is everywhere at Apple and infused in its culture. From his earliest days at Apple, Steve Jobs set the standard that all products should be “insanely great.” For me, as a designer and a customer, that means these products always embody the highest level of performance, function, and beauty. Then they reach an even higher rung of achievement: they go beyond simple sufficiency to the realm of surprise and delight.
It is easy to draw a direct line linking Apple's tenacious commitment to design and its unparalleled commercial and financial success. Great products boost the bottom line. But it's also important to go deeper to examine the design processes and practices that Apple uses in its management and organization. By exploring the strategic role that design plays in Apple's corporate culture and structure, I will make observations and extract key insights that business leaders and designers from any industry can use.
If you're a manager with a business degree and haven't had too much interaction with the concept of design or with your company's design department—if there is one, that is—you might be thinking that this book isn't for you. I would argue otherwise. Design isn't just a discipline taught in design schools. It isn't a tool or strategy unique to Steve Jobs or to Apple or to design firms. You might not realize it, but design infuses just about everything we interact with, from toothbrushes to clothes and cars and computers. In that sense, design is part of the material world and myriad products and services that companies create and that we buy. Some companies have used design from the very beginning, whereas others have discovered design along the way and have integrated design into their culture even after management structures and operational frameworks have been established.
In my mind, design is more than just the way a product looks or functions. It is a way of thinking about the world and how it works. By utilizing the main elements of design and how designers think, any company can leverage design the way Apple does. I know this is possible because as the front man for my internationally recognized global design firm, LUNAR, I speak with hundreds of businesspeople every year about how to grow their companies with innovative and exciting new products and services. More precisely, I speak with them about the future. Inevitably, these discussions about the future lead to design.
Over the past two decades, the increased focus on design in the popular media and culture and in business and management schools has drawn attention to how exceptional design can help companies exceed their corporate goals, even if the company doesn't have a history of design or its management doesn't have a design background. I see this shift in thinking every time a business leader looks me in the eye and emphatically tells me, “We want to be the Apple of our industry.”
I hear that all the time. But what does it really mean?
Sometimes, even savvy managers have only a vague notion of what design is, and that is often rooted in a number of myths about Apple's corporate design culture. Design and the broader creative approach go way beyond cool products that consumers find addictive. Apple sees design as a tool for creating beautiful experiences that convey a coherent point of view down to the smallest detail—from the tactile feedback of a keyboard to the out-of-the-box experience when a customer opens an iPhone or an iPad package. Much attention has been focused on those packages because design at Apple is part of a continual company-wide innovation process that doesn't stop at the design studio door. As I explain in this book, when design is the foundation and essential component of everything a company does, the package is as important as everything else.
Apple isn't the only company that has so passionately embraced design. It is a great example but not the only one. Design is happening at companies in every conceivable industry and sector. I see design becoming part of the conversation everywhere I look and not just at our firm or at the Stanford design program where I teach or because I am a designer. I hear design talked about in corporate boardrooms and among strategists and product development departments whether the company makes automotive parts or scooters for kids or video games.
Today, companies realize that in a competitive global marketplace it is imperative to know much more than which styling features or color options will make their product more admired and desired by customers. Executives are coming around to the idea that they must create experiences and meaning that go beyond the product. To me, this is clear evidence that the influence of design is expanding and changing as managers accept that operational excellence is not the only way to grow a business. They see that design is not an afterthought but rather a way to differentiate their products from those of competitors. They understand that what you really need is a better product rather than more ads or a more famous or notorious celebrity pitch person.
My interest in design dates from my youth. My father was an engineer for General Electric, and my mother was a math major with a great interest in the arts. Because of their influence, I felt equally comfortable in a science museum or an art museum. I have always spanned these two worlds—or, as Jobs described it at the launch of the original iPad, the intersection of Liberal Arts Street and Technology Street—in my professional and personal lives and in private pursuits.
This merging of the creative and the analytical, the artistic and the technical, is a theme that has followed me to this day. I studied mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, but after working for a couple of years in this field I knew that a purely technical career wasn't enough for me. So I enrolled in Stanford University's Joint Program in Design, so called because it was truly a collaborative effort sponsored by the departments of mechanical engineering and art.
Since graduating in 1993, I have had the great fortune to teach a number of classes in product design, the undergraduate version of my graduate studies. I love teaching creativity to some of the smartest students in the world, who have spent much of their time focusing on critical rather than creative thinking. The coursework in the program should not be confused with an industrial design program. It is rooted in engineering while also giving students the tools to explore creative alternatives. It teaches them how to prototype in a workshop with machine tools and laser cutters and also to appreciate aesthetics. Many of these ideas and concepts about the coming together of liberal arts and technology and its impact on design are discussed in this book.
Demand for this program at Stanford has grown dramatically over the past years. More than ever, students are aware of design as an academic and career pursuit much earlier in their lives. Perhaps this is why you picked up this book. As a culture, we are thinking, talking, and writing about design in new and exciting ways. In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to buy anything today that hasn't been designed—or at least intentionally considered—even if not to the highest standards. Looking for a vegetable peeler? What was once an undifferentiated bent-metal tool is now available in a wide range of colors and materials, each with its own take on providing more comfort and status to the customer. The fact is that good design has led to products that change the way we see the world and interact with it.
Because of this increased awareness of design, companies are looking to design to augment their competitive advantage, and they are looking to design firms to help them. We speak with clients about their products and potential products, and we listen to their stories and figure out which design strategies might better express their brand voice, solve their technical challenges, and connect on a deeper level with their customers. My main motivation in writing this book is to help businesspeople codify the advice we provide to our clients every day and to help designers understand how to broaden their roles inside business. Much of what you will read here is based on the insights and experiences gleaned from my involvement in the design world, working with many different clients, as well as my experiences interacting directly with Apple and interviews with Apple veterans and industry leaders in design and technology.
Throughout the book I talk generally about “managers” and “designers” as if they were always separate and entirely distinct categories within an organization. I do this for efficiency's sake, as a kind of shorthand, because in fact I know many managers who are incredibly creative, and I've also encountered many designers and creative types who run thriving and profitable businesses. But as a rule, when I talk about managers, they are leaders from strategy, marketing, engineering, and operations who have demanding roles that traditionally lean heavily on analytical capabilities. By contrast, when I speak of designers, I more likely think of people whose talents and roles are grounded more in creative strategies and solutions.
In this book, I use my experience as a design professional to unravel how Apple and other companies use design to their best advantage and how Apple and other companies sometimes fail to do so (yes, even Apple can falter)—and why. I want you to come away from reading this book with a good idea of what design is and what it can do for you and your organization. I provide a series of management tips and advice to help you steer your organization in the direction of design or bolster an existing design capability to its fullest potential.
I hope readers will be intrigued and inspired to apply these lessons at their own businesses, regardless of their positions in their organizations. I wrote this book to champion design and to encourage everyone in an organization to appreciate the power of design and to use it as Steve Jobs did at Apple—to create “insanely great” products and attain outrageous business results.