[Book Notes] Jony Ive
Jony developed his design instincts as a child, molded by his father. Five important activities shaped him: questioning why everything was designed the way it was and how it might be improved, sketching ideas by hand because of the time required and the care it demanded, creating models often using different materials, having a perspective on friendly objects, and being maniacal about details — down to something as small as the ball at the end of a pen.
This is called "jewelry," and it is very different from decoration. Decoration differs; jewelry has a point. Jony's design secret was simplicity and getting design out of the way. Make it, then simplify it. Jony focused on the user and worked backward. First the user story, then user perception.
Jobs Through Jony's Eyes
The book gave a great perspective on Jobs from someone who worked very closely with him. It may be worth rereading just to study Jobs more closely.
- Simplification: When Jobs came back, the first thing he did was narrow Apple's product line from 40 to 4.
- Sacrifice: Jobs wanted three concepts so he could sacrifice two. If you came to Jobs without a sacrifice, he'd push you to find it in the idea you had.
- Polish: Jobs would call unfinished ideas bad in order to pressure individuals to polish their thinking. This was done in a way that seemed harsh, but part of Jony's point is that Jobs did some of this privately and more supportively than the public myth suggests.
- Belief: Direct — Steve would tell people, "don't be afraid. If you wrap your mind around this you can do it." Indirect — when Jobs wasn't in the design studio, the team worked harder so they could have great stuff to show him next time.
- Take good ideas: Jobs would review ideas one week and come back the next week and talk about them as if they were his own.
Design is Creative Engineering
When Apple was failing, they were doing what every other tech company was doing: they had engineers build products, then sent them to design to make them pretty. The main takeaway from this story is to not do this.
At times I feel the engineering is hard enough and we can just build the UI to look like everyone else, but that is the wrong idea. Start with design and users and you may be able to move faster.
The Industrial Design Group gained power because they were the idea factory and they could effectively operationalize their ideas. Their thinking was how a product ought to be, and they pursued that relentlessly. Apple was incredibly protective of their creative engineering.
— Jay