Apple senior vice president of Industrial Design Jony Ive has given a rare interview to the London Evening Standard in which he makes several interesting statements regarding the strengths of Apple’s long-tenured, multidisciplinary design team and the difference between Apple’s approach to design and those of competitors. “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,” Ive said, responding to a question about his small team. “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,” he continued. “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.” Finally, discussing consumers’ care for design, Ive said, “One of the things we’ve really learnt 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.”
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