The New Idiom

What about the past...

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 00:38:30 -0500

It’s difficult to look back at the past semester and evaluate it with a clear mind. It seems to me like there have been too few days to achieve the necessary distance from it all, if that is even possible. Reflection is a tricky thing you see. It assumes some relative truth about a past event, however real or abstract that event may have been, and that our interpretation of the world and that event remains the same.

I am reminded of the way Clifford Geertz interprets the way we “are” as individuals; the doing, the thinking, and the living. “Man is an animal, suspended in the webs of significance he himself has spun”. Geertz is saying that as humans we have the ability to create and modify our cultures, individual and collective. And it’s these constructs that define what we see and “experience”. It’s also important to remember that what we experience and what we choose to remember from that experience are not always the same (Kahneman). They are certainly a subset of one another but it’s these “webs of significance” that dictate what we put forth and what we store, somewhere deeper in the recesses of our memories.

So does reflection really exist? Are we essentially looking back on an interpretation, which was made using a very different understanding of the world then the one we currently have? I would certainly hope that this is the case. I hope that we are seeing the world in a different way than we did 17+ weeks ago. Some might say that this is the essence of graduate level education and anything less will not suffice. Others might argue that is the essence of life and that it’s this dynamic interpretation of the world around us that makes us unlike any other living organism.

But all this does not simply mean that reflection is useless and we should spend time thinking only about the present and the future. Quite the contrary, I propose that we think of reflection in iterative terms. Consider the reasons one takes the graduate education leap. There must be some formal logic there, some powerful underlying reason to take the plunge and commit all this time and effort and money to achieve some end. I propose that reflecting quickly and often can help us keep in sight our original goals (or distill which ones to challenge). Reflection is a tool that can helps us navigate the complexity of our own thoughts by continuously evaluating and keeping in focus what is important to us.

Experiencing and reflecting on our education in this way can help us be more engaged participants, better teammates, and more empathetic researchers by embracing this “robust unstable system” that we are, as Rick Robinson eloquently describes the complexity of human behavior. It is about acknowledging that our unique point-of-view is in a constant state of flux and that it takes more than an occasional snapshot in time to have a grasp of it. Therefore reflecting more often can help us to keep our goals in focus and it forces us to evaluate our progress with the ultimate goal of getting what you want out of your education. Or in the very least figuring out something about yourself that you did not know before.

On behalf of the New Idiom I wish everyone in the ID Community a very Happy New Year. May the upcoming year bring with it the courage for all of us to embrace uncertainty and inspire us to make the everyday better for everyone.

Wojtek Tusz

When I’m researching, I am thankful for……knowing when to shut up and let the...

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 14:39:16 -0500

When I’m researching, I am thankful for…
…knowing when to shut up and let the participant do the talking.
…labeling my photos immediately, before I forget why I took them.
…remembering to bring a backup battery for the video camera.

When I’m conducting analysis, I am thankful for…
…knowing when the framework I’m using has outlived it’s usefulness.
…recognizing a red herring when I see one.
…my teammates building the insight matrix without me.

When I’m synthesizing my work, I am thankful for…
…teammates who understand the rules of brainstorming.
…design principles that make sense without telling me exactly what to do.
…plenty of half-sheets and post-it notes to go around.

When I’m prototyping, I am thankful for…
…knowing what fidelity I should be shooting for.
…prototypes that answer a question clearly.
…building enough time into my schedule to iterate on my ideas.

Happy holidays,
The New Idiom

Google Is My Enemy, or How I Found A Better Way To Research

Sun, 11 Nov 2012 21:23:15 -0500

Mia Wasikowska in Alice in Wonderland (Walt Disney Pictures 2010)

I’m the researcher in my house. Last spring, my boyfriend and I were in the market for a new car. I generated lists of needs and wants, culled car-buying webpages and bought a copy of the Consumer Report auto guide. I designed spreadsheets of car models with columns for features, ratings and prices and searched locally for prices and dealerships. Within a month, I’d selected top contenders and within a weekend of test-driving, we became satisfied owners of a used Hyundai Elantra.

I thought I knew how to conduct research, make sense of disparate sources and build an opinion. But, the ambiguity of design problems is turning out to be far more complicated than finding a new car.

So, what’s going on here?
Secondary research seems to be the best way for designers to get a basic understanding of trends and issues, who (or what) is involved and the relationships between all those moving parts. Everyone has their own way of approaching research and I’m learning that one method which works well for one topic area does not necessarily work for another. I just never really know what will work until I try it. Thanks to a class called “Understanding Context,” I’m doing a lot of practice these days.

Cover your bases.
Assignment: How is the tablet market evolving?

I could enter “tablets” in the Google search bar, find a Wikipedia article with links to name brands and start a list of distinguishing features. Then I might click a reference to “tablet market share” and find a link to market share press releases on a tech analytics firm’s website. If I return to my search results and see articles about the top trends from PC World; at the end of the story is a link to a related article on the latest Pew Research Center study about tablet consumer preferences and then next thing I know I would have 35 browser tabs open and…I…could…just…keep…going…

But there are better ways.

Read Craft of Research. The authors present their advice with meaningful examples that makes me feel less alone in dealing with my “struggling to handle massive amounts of research” problem. They make the process feel like something that every researcher has dealt with, lived through, and learned from.

Follow the 15-minute rule. Don’t get lost looking for that one fact. If I can’t find it in 15 minutes, it a) doesn’t exist, or b) is the not the right thing in the first place. I’ve learned to try synonyms or related topics to get to the info I’m really after.

Summarize when you can, or as soon as you get breathing room. It’s both a relief and a curse when I realize I have a big pile of data points or articles sitting in Evernote. But I can’t turn those piles of useful information into something usable until I have an opinion about it. So, I retype key facts with quote marks and summarize in a Microsoft Word document as I read. Often I end up noting down additional questions to research based on what I’m reading or I start injecting my opinion or links to what else I’ve read.

Try a framework, you might like it. Thanks to my class lectures, I’ve started a small collection of design frameworks that provide different ways of slicing and dicing design problems. With big topics, they seem to be a good way to figure out an “in.” So, if it makes my research easier, then I’ll take it and try it.

I’m also noticing an interesting side effect to all this secondary research. Today on the train, I heard a woman describing to a friend her opinion of her new smartphone. I started eavesdropping because I was really intrigued by what she was saying. I mentally filed her comments alongside all of the other observations I had made about smartphones in my secondary class research. I wish it would have been normal (i.e., not creepy) to ask her to elaborate.

My curiosity expands with the amount of secondary research I do and that’s pretty exciting. Whatever my next research task is (cars, smartphones or intellectual property), I’m confident that I’ll be able to sift through the masses of information out there without wanting to pull my hair out. If that’s not a sign of researcher, I’m not sure what is.

Laura is a contributing writer & MDes candidate @Institute of Design IIT

The Paradox of Transcultural Design

Wed, 31 Oct 2012 11:39:01 -0400

Hi I am Aashika
..Aashika Jain
..a female
..an Indian female
..an Indian female in her early twenties studying Design in America

What can we say about Aashika? Not much, we don’t know her. What can we say about ‘Indian females in their early twenties studying Design in America’? Well, Indians are intelligent so she must be smart, she must cook curry and rice everyday and probably worships cows.

This act of abstracting an individual’s identity to a point that it becomes representative of a community at large with their set of affinities and belief systems is the driving sentiment behind a Stereotype. Consciously or unconsciously we call on these wicked armaments[1] for clarity, convenience[2] and at times for amusement.[3]

Yet, when in Transcultural Design, we decided to confer a Stereotype’s true meaning, I was amazed at the reluctance and agony the course of discussion caused. The discourse did not yield much insight on how the class understood or dealt with stereotypes and we were generally apologetic about using them to elucidate viewpoints.

The premise of Transcultural Design is that differences among people exist. That these differences pervade a geographical region and vary with change in location. Yet, we are weary of being cast in one and we talk in defiance or fear of them. In order to understand a culture that is different from our own, it is imperative to build or adopt notions that can be tested. These notions are usually an impression of the culture from the outside which help us work inwards.

While exploring these notions I have realise that the search for differences among people led me to the identification of similarities among them. I see that, at the core, people are all driven by the same passions, the path they choose to pursue these passions and the value systems they build in the process make them different from each other.

Aashika is a contributing writer & MDes/MBA candidate @Institute of Design IIT

On storytelling...

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 10:58:00 -0400

This is the beginning.

Almost anything can happen.

This is where you find

the creation of light, a fish wriggling onto land,

the first word of Paradise Lost on an empty page.

Think of an egg, the letter A,

a woman ironing on a bare stage

as the heavy curtain rises.

This is the very beginning.

The first-person narrator introduces himself,

tells us about his lineage.

The mezzo-soprano stands in the wings.

Here the climbers are studying a map

or pulling on their long woolen socks.

This is early on, years before the Ark, dawn.

The profile of an animal is being smeared

on the wall of a cave,

and you have not yet learned to crawl.

This is the opening, the gambit,

a pawn moving forward an inch.

This is your first night with her,

your first night without her.

This is the first part

where the wheels begin to turn,

where the elevator begins its ascent,

before the doors lurch apart.

This is the middle.

Things have had time to get complicated,

messy, really. Nothing is simple anymore.

Cities have sprouted up along the rivers

teeming with people at cross-purposes—

a million schemes, a million wild looks.

Disappointment unshoulders his knapsack

here and pitches his ragged tent.

This is the sticky part where the plot congeals,

where the action suddenly reverses

or swerves off in an outrageous direction.

Here the narrator devotes a long paragraph

to why Miriam does not want Edward’s child.

Someone hides a letter under a pillow.

Here the aria rises to a pitch,

a song of betrayal, salted with revenge.

And the climbing party is stuck on a ledge

halfway up the mountain.

This is the bridge, the painful modulation.

This is the thick of things.

So much is crowded into the middle—

the guitars of Spain, piles of ripe avocados,

Russian uniforms, noisy parties,

lakeside kisses, arguments heard through a wall—

too much to name, too much to think about.

And this is the end,

the car running out of road,

the river losing its name in an ocean,

the long nose of the photographed horse

touching the white electronic line.

This is the colophon, the last elephant in the parade,

the empty wheelchair,

and pigeons floating down in the evening.

Here the stage is littered with bodies,

the narrator leads the characters to their cells,

and the climbers are in their graves.

It is me hitting the period

and you closing the book.

It is Sylvia Plath in the kitchen

and St. Clement with an anchor around his neck.

This is the final bit

thinning away to nothing.

This is the end, according to Aristotle,

what we have all been waiting for,

what everything comes down to,

the destination we cannot help imagining,

a streak of light in the sky,

a hat on a peg, and outside the cabin, falling leaves.

“Aristotle”

by Billy Collins

The City Listens (Jorge Angarita, Leticia Baiao, Jen Gzesh, Paul...

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 15:14:35 -0400

The City Listens (Jorge Angarita, Leticia Baiao, Jen Gzesh, Paul Keck) was a project for the City of Chicago exploring Chicago resident’s connection with the city and it’s culture. The final was an installation of a working prototype in the Old Town School of Folk Music. The following is the first of 3 Institute of Design student submissions to the annual IxDA awards compiled by Maggee Bond, Paul Keck & John Trotti…

ID Whiteboards!

Sun, 23 Sep 2012 23:04:00 -0400

Welcome to ID Whiteboards! A new interactive Idiom “experience”! This is how it works:

1) We: CLICK!

2) You: LOOK!

3) Everyone: INTERPRET & COMMENT! (what is going on here?)

Sharing is caring ya’ll! hint hint!!!

GO!!!

If you recognize your work…congratulations but shhhhhh! ;)

Schumpeter, Creative Destruction, and Danger Music

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 20:44:14 -0400

Dick Higgins, Danger Music No. 2, 1962

“Innovation is the market introduction of a technical or organisational novelty, not just its invention.”
- Joseph Schumpeter (Theorie der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung, 1911)

Joseph Schumpeter is better known, at least at the Institute of Design, for his coining of the term ‘creative destruction,’ describing his belief that capitalism creates economic development through the destruction of a preexisting economic order.

I can admit that I embrace the energy of Schumpeter’s statement without having the benefit of a completely nuanced understanding of the dynamics of his argument. There is something so appealing to my dramatic side to think of designers as the vanguard of a better future, tearing down the staid, inefficient, lost systems of the past. It may have to do with my interest with Marinetti’s Futurism in my undergraduate days.

But does ‘innovation’ really deliver value through annihilation? I thought it would be too easy to lead off this post with the quote that birthed the term ‘creative destruction,’ so instead I chose to share the quote above. What it leads me to think is that designers like to give themselves too much credit. Sure, we may be the ‘creators’ of innovation, but what is innovation if it doesn’t find its market? Once introduced, and adopted, it is the market itself that tears the old system apart with gusto.

But what led me to revisit this snippet of Schumpeter? An event that is taking place literally as I write this. Tonight, September 18, the Graham Foundation is marking the 50th anniversary of the Fluxus movement by presenting The Thousand Symphonies, by Dick Higgins.

From the description of the event:

“In 1962, Higgins wrote a series of events called Danger Music, which were designed to alternately put the body of the performer, composer, or audience member at risk. In 1968, he realized one of these pieces by having a New Jersey police officer fire a machine gun at a few hundred sheets of orchestral music paper. An ensemble later played the holes. An act of simultaneous destruction and creation, the gesture emphasized the use of guns for a purpose other than killing Viet Cong and scattering protestors.

Recently, Dennis Rosenthal, the director of Higgins’s estate, arranged with the City of Chicago to have four Chicago Police officers shoot new notation paper. On September 18 at the Graham Foundation, a live orchestra led by Stephen Burns will play the new sheets following the presentation of a short film documenting their creation.”

Creative destruction, indeed.

For any ID students interested in attending similar events in the future, please let me know.

Cheers,
Paul Keck

Bill Moggridge (1943-2012) Co-founder of IDEO, designer &...

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 13:01:33 -0400

Bill Moggridge (1943-2012) Co-founder of IDEO, designer & author

“Few people think about this or are aware of it. But there is nothing made by human beings that does not involve a design decision somewhere.”

He is survived by his wife of 47 years, Karin, and two sons, Alex and Erik.

Great design research is dynamic! As a discipline, it must...

Fri, 07 Sep 2012 10:03:00 -0400

Great design research is dynamic! As a discipline, it must continue to grow and adapt to meet the ever evolving needs of design today. DRC 2012 aims to expand the way we think about design research by exposing attendees to new networks of ideas outside the traditional realm of design. Join us as we look at human behavior, decision making, and the power of stories through the lens of both designers and non-designers!

www.drc.id.iit.edu

October 9-10th, 2012 @ Spertus Institute, Chicago, IL

A sampling of speakers for IIT Institute of Design’s Design Research Conference 2012

Sun, 26 Aug 2012 21:20:00 -0400

This year’s Design Research Conference seeks to expand the space design research plays in by looking beyond our current best practices.

Each year, exceptional speakers take the stage at IIT’s Design Research Conference, presenting their projects, stories, and experiences to the audience.

Below is a sampling of the confirmed speakers for this year’s conference. Check out the rest of the growing list, as well as a sampling of speakers from years past!

Larry Keeley
Larry Keeley is a globally recognized teacher, speaker, writer, thinker, and a fervent champion of the potential impact of a strategic combination of design and business.

Larry is an innovation strategist who often wonders why people bother to listen to innovation “experts” at all, since innovation fails about 96% of the time. With his mentor, Jay Doblin, Larry co-founded Doblin back in 1981 in order to obsess about this conundrum and both identify the root causes of innovation failure and develop more successful methods for its implementation.

Miriah Meyer
Miriah Meyer designs visualization systems that support exploratory, complex data analysis tasks for scientific research. These systems allow scientists to validate their computational models, to understand their underlying data in detail, and to develop new hypotheses and insights.

Miriah is an assistant professor in the School of Computing at the University of Utah and a faculty member in the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute. She takes a problem-driven approach to research, relying on both a detailed understanding of the needs of, and a close collaboration with, domain experts to guide the design of algorithms, visual encodings, and interaction mechanisms. Prior to joining the faculty at Utah, Miriah was a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard University and a visiting scientist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

Miriah was awarded a Microsoft Research Faculty Fellowship in 2012, as well as named to MIT Technology Review’s TR35 and Fast Company’s list of the 100 most creative people. She is the recipient of a NSF/CRA Computing Innovation Fellow award, and an AAAS Mass Media Fellowship that landed her a stint as a science writer for the Chicago Tribune.

Matthew R. Gardner
Matthew R. Gardner is lead service designer for the Center for Innovation’s Care at a Distance platform. He has been a part of several project teams, including those working on Mayo Clinic eConsults, re-envisioning prenatal care, clinical video visits to the home, video curbside consults and a recent “Connected Health” workshop for Mayo Clinic leadership.

Matthew believes in the ability of telemedicine as a new service model to deliver health care and supports evolving patient and clinician expectations regarding this new rhythm of care delivery. Before joining the Center for Innovation, Gardner did work for McDonald’s, Boeing, Insitum, Steelcase Foundation and Chicago Public Schools.

About IIT Institute of Design
Since its founding as the New Bauhaus in 1937, IIT Institute of Design (ID) has grown into the largest full-time graduate-only design program in the US. At ID, our masters and PhD programs feature a curriculum focused on a methodological and human-centered approach to design and strategy.

Janice Wong, John Shin, Jorge Angarita, Stephanie Smith
DRC 2012 Co-chairs | www.drc.id.iit.edu | @drctweets

Buy Tickets | Schedule | Location & Time

IIT Institute of Design’s Design Research Conference 2012

Sun, 19 Aug 2012 19:06:26 -0400

This year’s Design Research Conference seeks to expand the space design research plays in by looking beyond our current best practices.

Beyond the typical purview of design research lays a wealth of knowledge that can help broaden and deepen design’s lens on human-centered solutions. This year ID’s Design Research Conference is bringing together design researchers seeking interesting solutions from beyond the typical realm of best practices and the researchers who are exploring exciting frontiers of human behavior, decision-making, and unwieldy data.

Registration
Early registration is now open! Register early to guarantee your seat at the conference. Group rates and other discounts are available; for details, visit the registration page or send an inquiry to drc@id.iit.edu.

Janice Wong, John Shin, Jorge Angarita, Stephanie Smith
DRC 2012 Co-chairs | www.drc.id.iit.edu | @drctweets

Buy Tickets | Schedule | Location & Time

Inspired by Institute of Design’s history as the New...

Fri, 25 May 2012 13:51:44 -0400

Inspired by Institute of Design’s history as the New Bauhaus, NOWhaus was an evening of unconventional six-minute presentations by current ID students in the company of alumni and friends in the design community held at Public Works in Chicago’s Wicker Park on April 5, 2012. The evening was designed, organized, and curated by current ID students.

As a member of one of the teams taking part in this...

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 17:42:00 -0400

Chicago Cultural Plan 2012

SkyWords

SkyWords

The City Listens

The City Listens

The City Listens

Push

Push

As a member of one of the teams taking part in this semester’s Interactive Media Workshop, I wanted to put out one last call to action. We all know the semester is coming to a close, but please try to take the time to engage with one (or all) of the interactive installations that have come out of everyone’s efforts!

For this semester’s class, the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events commissioned the IIT Institute of Design to design, and deploy placemaking prototypes around selected neighborhoods as civic engagement portals for the 2012 Chicago Cultural Plan. These experiential installations located in cultural hubs around the city were designed to serve as “constantly on” participatory environments for citizens to share, view, and collectively build on each other’s ideas.

The three teams are:

SkyWords (at the City Hall)
Lauren Braun, Kareem Hindi, Lee Lin, Jose Mello, Jaime Rivera

The City Listens (at the Old Town School of Folk Music) (thecitylistens.com)
Jorge Angarita, Paul Keck, Leticia Baiao, Jennifer Gzesh

Push (at Pilsen/National Museum of Mexican Art)
Janice Wong, Philipp Bohm, John Shin, Nathaniel Jiang

Thank you,
Paul Keck

Design, designers, obsessions and more...a conversation with Jonathan Ive

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 16:36:00 -0400

These days you can’t throw a rock and not hit an Apple product. iMania is at it’s peak and Apple’s superstar designer Jonathan Ive is credited with much of Apple’s success in transforming the way we interact with the digital space and with each other. In this candid talk with the London Evening Standard, the recently knighted Londoner turned Cuppertino local discusses his obsessions, difficulty to define design (sound familiar?), his love of California, and the details that make every design project…well a design project.

As Apple’s Senior Vice President of Industrial Design, he is the driving force behind the firm’s products, from the Mac computer to the iPod, iPhone and, most recently the iPad. He spoke exclusively to the Evening Standard at the firm’s Cupertino headquarters.

Q: You recently received a Knighthood for services to design - was that a proud moment?

A: I was absolutely thrilled, and at the same time completely humbled. I am very aware that I’m the product of growing up in England, and the tradition of designing and making, of England industrialising first. The emphasis and value on ideas and original thinking is an innate part of British culture, and in many ways, that describes the traditions of design.

Q: Is London still an important city for design?

A: I left London in 1992, but I’m there 3-4 times a year, and love visiting. It’s a very important city, and makes a significant contribution to design, to creating something new where previously something didn’t exist.

Q: How does London differ from Silicon Valley?

A: The proximity of different creative industries and London is remarkable, and is in many ways unique. I think that has led to a very different feel to Silicon Valley.

Q: Why did you decide to move to California?

A: What I enjoy about being here is there is a remarkable optimism, and an attitude to try out and explore ideas without the fear of failure. There is a very simple and practical sense that a couple of people have an idea and decide to form a company to do it. I like that very practical and straightforward approach.

There’s not a sense of looking to generate money, its about having an idea and doing it - I think that characterises this area and its focus.

Q: What makes design different at Apple?

A: We struggle with the right words to describe the design process at Apple, but it is very much about designing and prototyping and making. When you separate those, I think the final result suffers. If something is going to be better, it is new, and if it’s new you are confronting problems and challenges you don’t have references for. To solve and address those requires a remarkable focus. There’s a sense of being inquisitive and optimistic, and you don’t see those in combination very often.

Q: How does a new product come about at Apple?

A: What I love about the creative process, and this may sound naive, but it is this idea that one day there is no idea, and no solution, but then the next day there is an idea. I find that incredibly exciting and conceptually actually remarkable.

The nature of having ideas and creativity is incredibly inspiring. There is an idea which is solitary, fragile and tentative and doesn’t have form.

What we’ve found here is that it then becomes a conversation, although remains very fragile.

When you see the most dramatic shift is when you transition from an abstract idea to a slightly more material conversation. But when you made a 3D model, however crude, you bring form to a nebulous idea, and everything changes - the entire process shifts. It galvanises and brings focus from a broad group of people. It’s a remarkable process.

Q: What makes a great designer?

A: It is so important to be light on your feet, inquisitive and interested in being wrong. You have that wonderful fascination with the what if questions, but you also need absolute focus and a keen insight into the context and what is important - that is really terribly important. Its about contradictions you have to navigate.

Q: What are your goals when setting out to build a new product?

A: Our goals are very simple - to design and make better products. If we can’t make something that is better, we won’t do it.

Q: Why has Apple’s competition struggled to do that?

A: That’s quite unusual, most of our competitors are interesting in doing something different, or want to appear new - I think those are completely the wrong goals. A product has to be genuinely better. This requires real discipline, and that’s what drives us - a sincere, genuine appetite to do something that is better. Committees just don’t work, and it’s not about price, schedule or a bizarre marketing goal to appear different - they are corporate goals with scant regard for people who use the product.

Q: When did you first become aware of the importance of designers?

A: First time I was aware of this sense of the group of people who made something was when I first used a Mac - I’d gone through college in the 80s using a computer and had a horrid experience. Then I discovered the mac, it was such a dramatic moment and I remember it so clearly - there was a real sense of the people who made it.

Q: When you are coming up with product ideas such as the iPod, do you try to solve a problem?

A: There are different approaches - sometimes things can irritate you so you become aware of a problem, which is a very pragmatic approach and the least challenging.

What is more difficult is when you are intrigued by an opportunity. That, I think, really exercises the skills of a designer. It’s not a problem you’re aware of, nobody has articulated a need. But you start asking questions, what if we do this, combine it with that, would that be useful? This creates opportunities that could replace entire categories of device, rather than tactically responding to an individual problem. That’s the real challenge, and that’s what is exciting.

Q: Has that led to new products within Apple?

A: Examples are products like the iPhone, iPod and iPad. That fanatical attention to detail and coming across a problem and being determined to solve it is critically important - that defines your minute by minute, day by day experience.

Q: How do you know consumers will want your products?

A: We don’t do focus groups - that is the job of the designer. It’s unfair to ask people who don’t have a sense of the opportunities of tomorrow from the context of today to design.

Q: Your team of designers is very small - is that the key to its success?

A: The way we work at Apple is that the complexity of these products really makes it critical to work collaboratively, with different areas of expertise. I think that’s one of the things about my job I enjoy the most. I work with silicon designers, electronic and mechanical engineers, and I think you would struggle to determine who does what when we get together. We’re located together, we share the same goal, have exactly the same preoccupation with making great products.

One of the other things that enables this is that we’ve been doing this together for many years - there is a collective confidence when you are facing a seemingly insurmoutable challenge, and there were multiple times on the iPhone or ipad where we have to think ‘will this work’ we simply didn’t have points of reference.

Q: Is it easy to get sidetracked by tiny details on a project?

A: When you’re trying to solve a problem on a new product type, you become completely focused on problems that seem a number of steps removed from the main product. That problem solving can appear a little abstract, and it is easy to lose sight of the product. I think that is where having years and years of experience gives you that confidence that if you keep pushing, you’ll get there.

Q: Can this obsession with detail get out of control?

A: It’s incredibly time consuming, you can spent months and months and months on a tiny detail - but unless you solve that tiny problem, you can’t solve this other, fundamental product.

You often feel there is no sense these can be solved, but you have faith. This is why these innovations are so hard - there are no points of reference.

Q: How do you know you’ve succeeded?

A :It’s a very strange thing for a designer to say, but one of the things that really irritates me in products is when I’m aware of designers wagging their tails in my face.

Our goal is simple objects, objects that you can’t imagine any other way. Simplicity is not the absence of clutter. Get it right, and you become closer and more focused on the object. For instance, the iPhoto app we created for the new iPad, it completely consumes you and you forget you are using an iPad.

Q: What are the biggest challenges in constantly innovating?

A: For as long as we’ve been doing this, I am still surprised how difficult it is to do this, but you know exactly when you’re there - it can be the smallest shift, and suddenly transforms the object, without any contrivance.

Some of the problem solving in the iPad is really quite remarkable, there is this danger you want to communicate this to people. I think that is a fantastic irony, how oblivious people are to the acrobatics we’ve performed to solve a problem - but that’s our job, and I think people know there is tremendous care behind the finished product.

Q: Do consumers really care about good design?

A: One of the things we’ve really learned over the last 20 years is that while people would often struggle to articulate why they like something - as consumers we are incredibly discerning, we sense where has been great care in the design, and when there is cynicism and greed. It’s one of the thing we’ve found really encouraging.

Q: Users have become incredibly attached, almost obsessively so, to Apple’s products - why is this?

A: It sound so obvious, but I remember being shocked to use a Mac, and somehow have this sense I was having a keen awareness of the people and values of those who made it.

I think that people’s emotional connection to our products is that they sense our care, and the amount of work that has gone into creating it.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/sir-jonathan-ive-the-iman-cometh-7562170.html

Sketching

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 01:31:00 -0500

“Oh, it’s just a sketch.”

You hear that pretty often, especially at a design school. It’s easy to dismiss the sketch, messy and informal as it usually is. It only takes a few seconds, minutes maybe, to rough one in. You show it to someone else, they frown, point out something that’s missing, you take a second look, maybe you argue or ask for clarification, then it’s tossed to the side. That quick, that simple.

Or maybe not. What’s happening when you sketch? Aren’t you committing some of yourself to that idea, to communicating this thing that’s trapped in your head, floating in the air between you and someone else? A timely sketch (not necessarily a ‘well-done’ sketch) can resolve an argument, save hours of work and frustration, and serve as a teaching tool.

Lately, I’ve been turning to sketching more in conversation as I’ve noticed just how often I, and others, can get lost waving our hands about in the air, trying to describe some abstract, complex idea. It’s amazing how a few shapes on paper, hardly what would qualify as a sketch even, can get a conversation back on track.

It’s this role as intermediary that I find interesting. A step away from blank nothing, towards some fixed “something.” When you extend that thought forwards, doesn’t everything qualify as a sketch, something unfinished to be improved upon? When we work on anything, aren’t we treating previous efforts as we would a sketch, something to be learned from, and ultimately improved upon? Doesn’t that describe who we are now, as merely a step towards some “other” in a hopefully better future?

Images are from a recently self-initiated weekly sketching assignment by John Shin, Nate Jiang and Paul Keck.

Being wrong...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 13:04:00 -0500

There is something liberating about embracing failure. Being in the middle of the Foundation year I am intimately familiar with this feeling. You have to surrender to it and only then does it cease to be a destructive force in your life.

As Kathryn Schultz ably points out in her TED talk, we are socially conditioned to “be right” all the time. Our perception of value and success is based on this concept. I found that accepting failure and learning to make it a tool for exploration and discovery can redefine what you value in your personal life as well as in your work.

So fail early and fail often…not only at ID!

on being wrong…something we are all vaguely familiar...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 10:49:35 -0500

on being wrong…something we are all vaguely familiar with…or is it?

Field Notes, NYC Design Week 2009

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:29:00 -0500

Want a break from staring at service design diagrams and business frameworks? Then we invite you to take a look at the work of Craighton Berman. Our thanks to Jessica Barnes for calling this to our attention.

From Craighton’s site:

Craighton is interested in using design as a tool for crafting experiences and bringing ideas to life. He has worked on projects that range from physical to digital design, illustration to art direction, and creative strategy to strategic visioning. This diverse body of work that spans across disciplines and industries is all linked by the desire to give shape to new ideas with an insightful eye, a strong point-of-view, and—most likely—a pen.

Link to Craighton’s website.

Better late than never! Here are some pictures snapped at the...

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:12:51 -0500

Better late than never! Here are some pictures snapped at the International Festival, November 19th.