alan wells

It’s hard to do, but if you get it right, the payoff can be huge. If I were on the team at Apple that designed the iPad, I would consider this post from Fred Wilson to be one of the highest compliments I could receive. Fred’s initial reaction to the iPad was lukewarm at best. After spending some time with it and seeing how the device fit into his home, he said this:

“I like how I feel when I am using the thing.”

Those of us who are early adopters, technology-savvy, or otherwise head of the curve often for get that it’s not about the walled garden but still abundant app ecosystem, the conflict between Apple and Adobe, or the presence or lack of multitasking. It’s about how it makes you feel. And in that respect, it seems as though the iPad is a resounding success. Or at least 2 million people seem to think so.

Fred’s post reminded me of Simon Sinek’s TEDTalk, where he talks about great companies (like Apple) that build brands around meaning:

An quote from László Moholy-Nagy’s 1947 book “Vision in Motion.”:

“The designer must see the periphery as well as the core, the immediate and the ultimate, at least in the biological sense. He must anchor his special job in the complex whole. The designer must be trained not only in the use of materials and various skills, but also in appreciation of organic functions and planning. He must know that design is indivisible, that the internal and external characteristics of a dish, a chair, a table, a machine, painting, sculpture are not to be separated…

There is design in organization of emotional experiences, in family life, in labor relations, in city planning, in working together as civilized human beings. Ultimately all problems of design merge into one great problem: ‘design for life’.

Wish I had this quote for the presentation I gave last week. Thanks to 37Signals: Signal vs Noise for this one.

Could I tell my clients this and still get design work? I’m not sure I’ve got the confidence to try it yet, but I really feel like this is the most honest description of the design process I’ve ever read. Exactly the way I think about design.

“When I do a design project, I begin by listening carefully to you as you talk about your problem and read whatever background material I can find that relates to the issues you face. If you’re lucky, I have also accidentally acquired some firsthand experience with your situation. Somewhere along the way an idea for the design pops into my head from out of the blue. I can’t really explain that part; it’s like magic. Sometimes it even happens before you have a chance to tell me that much about your problem! Now, if it’s a good idea, I try to figure out some strategic justification for the solution so I can explain it to you without relying on good taste you may or may not have. Along the way, I may add some other ideas, either because you made me agree to do so at the outset, or because I’m not sure of the first idea. At any rate, in the earlier phases hopefully I will have gained your trust so that by this point you’re inclined to take my advice. I don’t have any clue how you’d go about proving that my advice is any good except that other people — at least the ones I’ve told you about — have taken my advice in the past and prospered. In other words, could you just sort of, you know…trust me?” – Michael Bierut

So much of what designers do is intuitive, tricky, and not rational. I think that’s probably why we do what we do. But can you tell that to someone who isn’t a designer, who is uneasy with that kind of ambiguity?

At IDEO, they say that to work there you must thrive in ambiguity. I think that’s a quality of good designers… being comfortable with the ambiguity of the process.