ACM — Interactions — Volume XIX.3 — May + June 2012 — On Modeling Forum What can Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive teach us about designing? Hugh Dubberly — Dubberly Design Office — [email protected] The day after Steve Jobs died, my friend Rich Binell, his time at Next, Steve Jobs did not build a successful another Apple alum, asked, “Why did Steve Jobs’s product. Products led by others—the Apple II, the passing affect us more than the passing of other Macintosh II, and the Laserwriter II—kept Apple alive. notable people?” Of course, Jobs changed the world, When Jobs returned to Apple, he seems to have and many of us were moved by his work. changed. The iPod, iPhone, and iPad followed a smoother path than his earlier products. What was different? What did Steve Jobs learn How did he do it? during his years in the wilderness? What can he teach us about designing? I see three principles. Parts of the story are familiar. While still in high school, Jobs learned from Bill Hewlett how an individual can expand possibilities. His experience with Hewlett, courses Whole Systems Thinking at Reed College, and mentoring by PR maven Regis McKenna also expanded Jobs’s sense of “quality” and Jobs’s concept of systems matured. Apple, Next, and its importance. Jobs seems to have understood quality Pixar were never just hardware companies, but in their much as Robert Pirsig did—as a consequence of making early phases their notion of system was limited to and as an effect of process. (Pirsig published Zen and the hardware and software integration, closely coupled with Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values marketing communications. Later, Apple’s systems think- two years after Jobs graduated from high school. Pirsig’s ing grew to include the integration of products, services, book was popular, and perhaps Jobs read it around that content, distribution, communications, and developers— time. Jobs’s BMW motorcycle suggests a connection.) the creation of ecosystems. Apple’s systems approach Jobs recognized quality during his visit to Xerox’s shows through in many places, such as the company’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), where he first online presence, its retail stores, and its frighteningly saw computers displaying a forerunner to what has efficient supply chain (which had been notoriously poor become, with his help, a standard computer interface. until Steve Jobs hired Tim Cook to fix it). Lisa, Macintosh, and Next were amazing attempts to bring that quality to a broader audience. The fully automated Macintosh factory in Fremont and the 1984 Broad, Deep Teams Mac introduction were also expressions of quality, but the Lisa, Macintosh, and Next computers themselves During his second reign, Jobs made Apple’s product fell short. My point is: During his first reign at Apple and development process self-sustaining. Gone were the 1 What can Steven Jobs and Jonathan Ive teach us about design? pirate flags and death marches, replaced by a healthier Understanding the soul of a product (or of an environment—broad and deep expertise, a measure organization) requires conversation—about what you of respect, and a culture that managed to retain many believe in, about fundamental values, about quality. members for 10 years or more, enough time to build These ideas must be argued and agreed upon. Likewise, experience and trust. During the same period, Apple’s expressing the soul of a product requires still more prototype iteration cycle shrank to one-third or one- conversations, still more argument and agreement. At quarter of the industry norm. this level, design is conversation. Design Conversations Other Leader-designer Partnerships Perhaps most important: Jobs created partnerships While it may be “magic,” the leader-designer-partnership with designers. model is not unique to Apple. It’s an old pattern. Well During Apple’s early years, Tom Suiter, who had before Steve Jobs partnered with Jonathan Ive, leader- been at Landor, showed Jobs that it is possible to build designer partnerships often led to great things. At Pixar, a world-class in-house graphic design team. (Jobs co-founder Ed Catmul has an extraordinary partnership didn’t think it could be done but let Suiter try.) Suiter’s with director John Lasseter. (Exposure to their partner- organization survived Jobs’s departure (and Suiter’s). ship had to have had a profound effect on Jobs.) At IBM, The organization also survived the long interregnum, CEO Tom Watson Jr. partnered with Eliot Noyes, who and upon his return, Jobs developed a new partnership in turn collaborated with Richard Sapir, Paul Rand, and with creative director Hiroki Asai, who now manages a host of other great designers and architects, a story Apple’s graphic design team. wonderfully chronicled in Gordon Bruce’s authoritative As Jobs developed Macintosh, he forged close (but monograph on Noyes.3 At Container Corporation, CEO short-lived) partnerships with several designers—most Walter Paepke partnered with Herbert Bayer. Adriano notably, perhaps, with Susan Kare, who was responsible Olivetti partnered with Marcello Nizzoli. Artur and Erwin for the appearance of the original Macintosh UI. Unfortu- Braun partnered with Dieter Rams. At Herman Miller, nately, the original Macintosh team disbanded soon after CEO Max Dupree partnered with George Nelson, who in Jobs left Apple, though members of the team went on turn collaborated with a host of great designers. At CBS, to make other significant contributions, such as Hyper- CEO William Paley partnered with William Golden, and Card (Bill Atkinson) and Newton (Larry Tesler). Paley’s successor, Frank Stanton, partnered with Gold- Very early on Jobs began a long partnership en’s successor, Lou Dorfsman, illustrating that the model with Lee Clow, creative director at Chiat-Day, Apple’s can live beyond founders. advertising agency. Clow was the art director who It’s not an all-guy thing, either. Hans Knoll partnered collaborated on the famous 1984 commercial for with (and later married) Florence Schust. Martha Stew- the Macintosh with writer Steve Hayden. On Jobs’s art partners with Gael Towey and Eric Pike. return, Clow led the teams that created the iconic Think There are many similar examples. In these Different, iMac, and iPod campaigns. partnerships, not all the leaders are founders, though In the early days, Apple outsourced most of its prod- most are. (Tom Watson Jr. was the son of IBM’s uct design, principally to Frog. Jobs continued to out- founder.) The key trait is that the leader identify source product design at Next. (Jobs left Apple in 1985; closely with the company and feel an extraordinary in 1989, Bob Brunner joined Apple, building a world- responsibility for it, perhaps even seeing the company class, in-house product design team.) as an extension of himself or herself. Unfortunately, Jobs’s later partnership with Jonathan Ive (hired by non-founder or non-family managers don’t often have Brunner) is well known. What’s less well known is how the same passion, or perhaps they are simply more Jobs and Ive worked together and how they worked with realistic about their relationship to the company. Either the rest of the product development team. We get this way, hired managers rarely form close partnerships tantalizing clue from Jonathan Ive: “Much of the design with designers or support strong design organizations. process is a conversation, a back-and-forth as we [Jobs (Frank Stanton at CBS was an exception, and we and Ive] walk around the tables and play with the models”.1 instinctively recognize that Tim Cook faces a challenge That goes to the heart of my point about Jobs’s as Jobs’s successor.) partnerships with designers. He was setting up The CEO-designer partnership model shows up in conversations. These conversations are key to Jobs’s just about every company that creates great design view of what design is. “In most people’s vocabularies, over a sustained period. The consistency of this pattern design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the suggests that it is repeatable—and learnable. It also fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing suggests that claims about the effectiveness of design could be further from the meaning of design. Design is thinking (absent some larger conversation and the the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends partnership that sustains it) are exaggerated. While up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the valuable, ethnography plus rapid prototyping gets you product or service”. 2 only so far; they cannot deliver high-quality design and 2 What can Steven Jobs and Jonathan Ive teach us about design? sustain it over a long period without a special kind of move between states? How does a company’s design support from the head of the organization. capability improve or degrade? It is the larger conversations—the conversations These questions are practical, with answers worth about goals and means, about needs and possibilities, perhaps billions of dollars. Consider some examples. about context and constraints, about what needs doing Samsung’s chairman, Kun-hee Lee, understands and why—that designers are good at facilitating. the value of design and has made it central to the Good designers force these conversations, because company.5 Why, then, has Samsung failed to achieve good results require them. the same level of design excellence as Apple? We might Good consultants nourish these conversations too. also ask what has happened to Sony, once a design Great advertising agencies can also spark them and leader? And what of IBM, which once had the best- sometimes sustain them. But the conversations may managed design program in the world? work best when most of the parties are inside the Despite considerable effort and expense, Samsung company.