Apple was a joint venture of three electronic enthusiasts that came into existence in 1976. The company had success to a degree in the history of the United States that has few equals. This enterprise is one of the top most valuable companies in the world and well known for its innovative organizational culture. Credited with the company that came up with the idea of creating computers for ordinary people, incorporating “Graphical User Interface” to create a technology that is ubiquitous today in the world of computing devices. At that time, professionals working at electronic giants like HP that now have assembly lines teeming with computers and related hardware, had no idea what common people would do with computers.
Apple outsources most of its manufacturing except for product design, and this company is the ace of all aces when it comes to the design of technology products. Let’s take a deeper look into the impeccable, high quality “design” aspects of this brand that make the company popular and unique throughout the world.
Customer centric products
The most prominent aspect of the products from Apple is the unique and innovative designs that have become synonymous with this technology brand. Apple ships in technology from around the world and cleverly combines it inside digital machines or devices with user-friendly software and elegantly designed hardware. But, the most noticeable factor is that it knows what its customers want. Apple most importantly designs its products around the needs of its customers not the demands of technology.
Always welcome and cherish new ideas
Apple is a synchronizer and an integrator of technology that collects ideas from around the world, but packs them in packages that reflect its own incredibly attractive and noticeably simplistic designs. This approach excelled by Apple is called “Network Innovation” is no more confined to electronics and technological products. Many companies like “Proctor & Gamble” and others have realized that good ideas have no boundaries and inspirations can be derived from a host of different sources such as startups and academic institutions knitting them into a network and making sure that their in-house engineers remain innovative, away from “not invented here” syndrome.
Simplistic designs win
Apple always had a very simplistic approach to the designs of its products that is synonymous to its brand. It is very evident that a large number of firms believe that sophisticated technological products are the ones their customers are looking for whenever new technology is knocking socks off. It results in devices that were designed by engineers for a handful of engineers, nerds, and geeks. On the other hand, Apple kept an approach that was a combination of clever technology with simplistic designs that facilitates ease of use and control for a huge segment of the market that is not tech savvy.
The iPod was not the first mp3 music player, but it surely was the first music player that by design made saving, downloading, organizing, transferring and online buying of music easy and fun so much so that everyone fell for it. Similarly, the iPhone was not the first mobile phone that incorporated web browsers, mp3 players, and other apps, but compared to Apple, most of its competitors rolled out smartphones that weren’t as effortless to use — making iPhone an impressive success.
Apple is known to be an innovation king and a trendsetter when it comes to simplistic designs of products as a huge number of firms followed the same path in their product designs to achieve success in various markets.
Accept Design Mistakes
In design, there is no one thing completely right or wrong, so there is a high probability of getting confused. Peculiarly, the organizational culture at Apple highly encourages workers to make mistakes. As a result, the employees are not afraid of being wrong, and they usually commit stupid blunders in their product designs. Each error leads to learning something more exciting and new. The trial and error method for solving problems is a general practice at Apple. It is the underlying process that we humans use to learn as children. Making several mistakes until we learn something new and the reward of the excitement that triggers sparks for further interest. This imperfection of the human mind should not have a regard as a flaw; in fact, it is something being incorporated into modern Artificial Intelligence and machine learning.
A simplified team
The design teams at Apple are kept small, and most efforts and resources are directed towards improvement of tools and processes. The number of designers is kept low probably for the sake of simplicity, and it has another good reason. By maintaining the size of the core design team small enhances the level of collaboration and communication that reflects in the product design quality.
Attention to minute details
The designers at Apple spend months on something as insignificant as the design of an on/off power switch or the material beneath the aluminum base of a laptop prototype. Small things that we just take for granted, never pay too much attention to and love, are a thought process and experimentation of many months. The apparently insignificant, small, and invisible details all add up to every new Apple product design and orchestrates the beauty of design in it.
Collaboration vs. design
The designers at Apple only spend ten percent of the time on designing and brainstorming ideas in the design teams. The rest of the 90% of the time of a designer is spent with marketers, engineers, IT professionals and other Apple personnel to come up with implementations of those design ideas. Every employee has a sharp focus on the “User Experience” (UX) side of the products design at Apple, not just designers, and this is invaluable in making products designs that shine in the hands of Apple users.
Fail Wisely
Another design lesson that Apple teaches us is called “fail wisely” or learn from your failures. The most remote example of it is found in “Macintosh,” the highly successful Apple computer that rose from the ashes of another Apple computer called “Lisa” that was a huge failure when it was released. Lisa was the first commercial computer that had Graphical User Interface (GUI) built into it, even then it fails to capture any significant attention from the market. It was not enough for the Apple’s co-founder and key decision maker Steve Jobs to give up, and subsequently, he made his mark in computing history by releasing the highly successful, Macintosh that took advantage of GUI in a fascinating new way and having unique design features. But this is not the complete story piece. The failure of Lisa also became an inspiration for other companies and products. For instance, GUI behind the Microsoft Windows allegedly emerged from Lisa’s GUI that is still evolving and rocking the world of computing.
The design of a product plays a significant role in the failure or success of a product. But, if a product fails to function properly and does not go as expected in the market, the company behind its design should tolerate this with perseverance and learn from it.
The success of Apple products is the hallmark of Apple’s craftsmanship of this blue-chip multinational company. The approach of Apple to product design is the token distinction of this company’s craftsmanship and exerts a significant positive influence on the rest of the industry. Even the big players in information technology sector follow Apple’s approach to create products that carry excellent functional value packaged in innovative designs. There is very little doubt that Apple still leads the landscape of the technology industry when it comes to product design and quality that is inspirational and sensational to many people around the world.
