A comment on Apple's design strategy

First, a caveat and explanation.

I was deeply involved in Apple's software designs in the in-between Steve
Jobs era, first as Apple Fellow and User Experience Architect (an invented
title, and as best as I can determine the invention of the term User
Experience (for which the small group I headed -- Harry Sadler and Tom
Erickson and later, Austin Henderson,  should get credit), then as Vice
President of Advanced Technology, where some 250 people did advanced
research and development.

BUT, I have had no contact since I left, so my comments about the current
state of affairs is incomplete and somewhat speculative, although based
upon discussions with my friends and former staff who are still there.

----
Any company that makes products for millions of people cannot base the work
on small subgroups. Apple always aimed at a broad market. it most
definitely never aimed at an age bracket, for example children. The fact
that kids love their stuff is a side effect.

Apple's primary markets when I was there were education, design, and home.
The business market was small.  We did collect information on the needs of
these markets and did lots of observations and field visits. But the
designs were always generic: aimed at making things understandable and
useful for the entire world.  The field observations and knowledge of the
target sectors guided the developments of features, which, in general,
degraded the experience because the more stuff that got added, the more
confusing for everyone.  But the fundamental principles of operation and
the basic designs were taken as given and were not modified for any
particular user group.

(I know: I fought hard to change some things. I wanted a two-button mouse,
arguing that the data used to select a single-button were no longer
relevant. I tried to simplify the clumsy keyboard, complete with keys
nobody understood (Print Screen anyone?). I argued for all sorts of
enhancements. I had lots of supporters, but in the end, none of these were
done. (Jobs finally did all of them).  I even started a team that designed
an entire new approach to computer usage, ABC we called it, Activity-based
computing, but after some 8 months of intense effort with a team of roughly
30 people, the effort was cancelled: too big a change.  I still think it
superior.  (The spaces feature of the Mac OS X is a weak implementation of
one of our basic ideas.)

My knowledge of contemporary Apple is that it is more guided by marketing
than by designers. Actually, this was true when I was there. Note that I
also developed a good deal of respect for the marketing people I worked
with. They were the ones who took me to stores and workplaces, watching how
badly our stuff was displayed and marketed, how badly it was designed for
use in companies.  However, we were not able to translate that
understanding into the product line.   Why? The decision process was too
complex, too bureaucratic, to ponderous. Everything got watered down. Great
ideas were badly implemented, or just as bad, only partially implemented,
so they didn;t work right. Then the fact that they didn't work was used in
an "I told you so" mode so that instead of fixing the problems, the entire
idea was dropped. Stupid.   I fought hard to resurrect great ideas that had
been discarded, but nobody would work on anything that was tagged as a
failure.

Apple rewarded creativity. That is not a good idea when one is trying to
bring out a complex product: creative people are fun to talk to, but not to
work with. Once the design has been established, you have to turn off the
creativity and stay focussed. Apple was unable to do that.

Jobs gave up with the stores, got rid of all the channels and opened up the
Apple Stores, against everyone's advice. Specialized stores of this sort
always fail. Sony, for example. Jobs ignored all this wisdom: the rest is
history.  (Now that the Apple store has shown the way, Apple has opened up
its sales to other stores and vehicles.)

But the main driving force for the great enhancement of the Apple product
has been the single-minded focus provided by Jobs.

When I was at Apple, we had too many very bright creative people all
striving to get their pet ideas into the product. As a result, the products
lost their focus.

In my opinion, the single most important thing Jobs did was to throw out
the consensus making system (some of which I had designed), throw pout the
usability group (which I had helped build -- although it was in the product
group, not the Advanced technology group), and rely on the single,
well-developed, extremely focused views of a single person, namely himself.

Want good design? Follow human-centered design principles.  Do testing.
Iterate.

Want great design: follow the instincts of a great leader.

It is that simple.

I do not expect any case histories that will shed light in this way. Too
bad.

Then again, this is the wrong thing to teach students, that they should
follow their instincts. Few are capable of being great. The rest need to
follow methods guaranteed to produce the good.  Alas, everyone likes to be
great. Too many people think that they can be Steve Jobs.

Nope, you can't.  Moreover, all great designers also have great failures.
Jobs had quite a lot of failures.

Don