Wie kommt Apple zu seinem Design?

2. August 2009 in Design, User Centered Design |

apple_logo Lobhuddelei über Apples Design kann man überall lesen. Aber Informationen darüber, wie Apple zu seinem Design kommt, findet man eher selten.
In meinem Artikel über Designprinzipien hatte ich Jonathan Ives, Senior VP of Industrial Design, mit folgenden Worten zitiert:

[...] it is about making the design understandable. [...] You are conveying what the object is, what it does, how it does it, where it does it, and how much it’s going to cost. So especially if you’re dealing with incredibly compelling technology like computers, the responsibility is to make the relationship between people and the technology as effective, as natural, as accessible, and as enjoyable as possible.

Aber jetzt habe ich einem Artikel von Alain Breillatt weitere Informationen über den Design Prozess von Apple gefunden.

Dort zitiert er Michael Lopp, Senior Engineering Manager, der im Rahmen einer Präsentation folgende Eigenheiten des Appleschen Designprozesses benennt:

Pixel-perfect mockups are critical

This is hard work and requires an enormous amount of time, but is necessary to give the complete feeling for the entire product. [...] [T]he designers of a piece of Apple software create an exact image—down to the very pixel [...] for every single interface screen and feature.
10 to 3 to 1

Take the pixel-perfect approach and pile on top of it the requirement that Apple designers expect to design 10 different mockups of any new feature under consideration. [...] Then, by using specified criteria, they narrow these 10 ideas down to three options, which the team spends months further developing…until they finally narrow down to the one final concept that truly represents their best work for production.
Paired design meetings

Every week, the teams of engineers and designers get together for two complementary meetings.
Brainstorm meeting—leave your hang-ups at the door and go crazy in developing various approaches to solving particular problems or enhancing existing designs. This meeting involves free thinking with absolutely no rules.
Production meeting—the absolute opposite of the brainstorm meeting, where the aim is to put structure around the crazy ideas and define the how to, why, and when.

Weitere Dinge, die Apple von anderen Firmen unterscheiden, seien:

Apple thinks good design is a present.

Apple does not do market research.

Apple has a very small team who designs their major products.

Apple owns their entire system.

Apple focuses on a select group of products.

Apple has a maniacal focus on quality.

…und zählt ein Eigenschaften auf, die gutes Design in Firmen möglich machen:

You need a leader who prioritizes new product innovation.

You need to focus.

You need to know your customer and your market.

You need the right people, and you need to reward them.

Um mit einem Ives Zitat abzuschließen (auch ein neues Fundstück), das diese Punkte sehr schön auf den Punkt bringt:

Our goal is to design and develop and bring to market good products. We trust as a consequence of that, people will like them, and as another consequence we’ll make some money. But we’re really clear about what our goals are. [...]
We try not to bring out another product that’s just different. ‘Different’ and ‘new’ is relatively easy. Doing something that’s genuinely better is very hard.

Die oben genannten Punkte werden in dem Artikel von Breillatt noch genauer erläutert. Das “Weitersurfen” lohnt sich also…

→ You can’t innovate like Apple
→ Jonathan Ive on The Key to Apple’s Success