Jonathan Ive on Industrial Design
I'm a big fan of his work, but I feel minimalism can easily be taken too far. Does an indicator not need to be visible when it's off? How do you confirm that it is off. Yes, you'll eventually learn where it is by repeated exposure to it when it's on but there will still be some uncertainty even then, especially if you deal with multiple machines.
Personally I like that minimalism and want it in the products I buy, but I'd not go so far as to say it's more usable than a more prosaic alternative where you have a row of cheap indicator leds with little pictograms next to them.
Reminds me of this comic strip too:
I've seen the documentary and agree that it's a great way to spend an hour or so. What was disturbing though is exposed in the first minute of this video clip. I'm forgetting his name, but the speaker is basically suggesting that the only impactful company in the world actually doing design is Apple. It's disheartening to hear, and in the years since the documentary that point seems to be even more true.
Do you think we'll see a renaissance of design as a differentiator for businesses, or is something so difficult to account for prior to product launch doomed to be discarded by all but a few companies?
Take away quote for me:
"So many of the products we're surrounded by, they want you to be very aware of just how clever the solution was... [a solution should] speak to how you are going to use it, not to the terrible struggles that we as designers and engineers had."
This is from a documentary called Objectified:
It is amazing how many parallels there are between industrial design and software design. In some way the two disciplines are indistinguishable.
Yet, the software industry culture tends to prefer designers with computer science background/training, rather than "proper" design background.
Objectified is really great documentary, highly suggested to whoever "make" stuff.
One of my favorite designers. Interesting to hear him talking about creating the tools to create the design.
The whole documentary and Apple's approach to design can be summed up in this one sentence Ive makes: "..that's quite obsessive isn't it?"