Sir Jonathan Ive, Jony to his friends, is arguably one of the world’s
most influential Londoners. The 45-year-old was born in Chingford — and
went to the same school as David Beckham. He met his wife, Heather
Pegg, while in secondary school. They married in 1987, have twin sons
and now live in San Francisco.
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 industrializing 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 characterizes 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 galvanizes 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 insurmountable 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.
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