That's the magic

Q: Is there a chance of hubris creeping into the company?

A: People are our number one asset, and the executive team spends a lot of time thinking about recruiting and retaining great talent. We've said no to a lot of good products, great products even, in order to remain focused. That focus is so ingrained that the management team would never let hubris take hold. That's not what we're about. Focus on people and ensure that it's a small list of things to work on. That's the magic behind us.

Eric Slivka, “Apple COO Tim Cook Speaks at Goldman Sachs Conference,” Mac Rumors, 23 Feb 2010, www.macrumors.com/2010/02/23/apple-coo-tim-cook-speaks-at-goldman-sachs-conference/ via Rich Goade.

most failures are ignored

The problem with science, then, isn’t that most experiments fail — it’s that most failures are ignored.

Jonah Lehrer, "Accept Defeat: The Neuroscience of Screwing Up," Wired, Jan 2010, www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_accept_defeat via Rich Goade.

what should we do?

Now that we can do anything, what should we do?

Bill Buxton quotesondesign.com/bill-buxton or datadaylife.com/2010/01/bill-buxton-on-natural-user-interfaces

design restraint

At Apple, there is a similar link between the ultimate design-team leader, Mr. Jobs, and the products. From computers to smartphones, Apple products are known for being stylish, powerful and pleasing to use. They are edited products that cut through complexity, by consciously leaving things out — not cramming every feature that came into an engineer’s head, an affliction known as “featuritis” that burdens so many technology products.

"A defining quality of Apple has been design restraint,” says Paul Saffo, a technology forecaster and consultant in Silicon Valley.

Steve Lohr, "Steve Jobs and the Economics of Elitism," New York Times, 29 Jan 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/weekinreview/31lohr.html

Often our hardest job... is to remove

Often our hardest job... is to remove, remove, remove bit by bit, anything that is unnecessary, that gets in the way of maximum unity. It's like music, we make a melody like this - Instead of discord - something like that. I think it's very close to composing music. Creating harmony, something very sensual...

Ronan Bouroullec as quoted in Objectified (Directed by Gary Hustwit), Swiss Dots, 2009, www.objectifiedfilm.com. Quote starts at 26:14.

Learning what the problem is IS the problem

The great design thinker Horst Rittel once wrote that “a design problem keeps changing while it is treated, because the understanding of what ought to be accomplished, and how it might be accomplished is continually shifting. Learning what the problem is IS the problem.”

Peter Hall, "A Good Argument," MetropolisMag.com, 18 Mar 2009, www.metropolismag.com/story/20090318/a-good-argument via Alan Blood.

Don’t dig for the answer—connect

8. Be an anthropologist, not an archaeologist.

An archaeologist seeks to understand the past by investigating its relics and digging for the truth of what was. An anthropologist studies people to understand their values, needs, and desires. If you want to design new solutions for the future, you have to understand what people care about and design for that. Don’t dig for the answer—connect.

"IDEO’s Ten Tips For Creating a 21st–Century Classroom Experience," MetropolisMag.com, Feb 2009, www.metropolismag.com/story/20090218/ideos-ten-tips-for-creating-a-21st-century-classroom-experience via Alan Blood.

The Making of a Design Thinker

One of my heroes is the Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, a man who lived before the profession of design even existed. As the challenges of the industrial age spread to every field of human endeavor, a parade of bold innovators who shaped the world, as they have shaped my own thinking, followed him: William Morris, Frank Lloyd Wright, the visionary educators of the German Bauhaus, the American industrial designers Raymond Loewy and Henry Dreyfuss, the team of Ray and Charles Eames. What they all shared was optimism, an openness to ex-perimentation, a love of storytelling, a need to collaborate, and an instinct to think with their hands—to build, to prototype, and to communicate complex ideas with masterful simplicity. They didn’t just do design; they lived design. These great thinkers were not as they appear in the coffee-table books about the “pioneers,” “masters,” and “icons” of modern design. They were not minimalist, esoteric members of design’s elite priesthood, and they did not wear black turtlenecks. They were creative innovators who bridged the chasm between thinking and doing because they were passionately committed to the goal of a better life and a better world. Today we have the opportunity to take their example and unleash the power of design thinking as a means of exploring new possibilities, creating new choices, and bringing new solutions to the world. In the process, we may find that we have made our societies healthier, our businesses more profitable, and our own lives richer and more meaningful.

Tim Brown, "The Making of a Design Thinker," MetropolisMag.com, Oct 2009, metropolismag.com/story/20091021/the-making-of-a-design-thinker.

Dream bigger

“It’s time to take risks,” Mr. Fielding said he told them. “When consumers are ready to spend again, we will be ready.”

The involvement of Mr. Jobs, the Apple chief executive who joined the Disney board with the 2006 acquisition of Pixar, is particularly notable. For the first time, Mr. Jobs’s fingerprints can be seen on Disney strategy, in the same way that he influenced the look and feel of Apple’s own immensely popular retail chain. While Mr. Jobs did not personally toil on the Imagination Park concept, he pushed Disney to move far past a refurbishment.

“Dream bigger — that was Steve’s message,” said Andy Mooney, chairman of Disney Consumer Products."

Brooks Barnes, "Disney’s Retail Plan Is a Theme Park in Its Stores," New York Times, 12 Oct 2009,
www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/business/media/13disney.html.

never use more when less will do

A fundamental design and life lesson from the Zen arts is to never use more when less will do....The ancient art of Japanese brush painting called Sumi-e provides a powerful lesson concerning the use of color, communication, and restraints. Sumi-e was brought to Japan from China and is an art deeply rooted in Zen, embodying many of the tenets of the Zen aesthetic including simplicity and the idea of maximum effect with minimum means....

...Either way the lesson is clear: few colors carefully selected and positioned can be more effective than many colors indiscriminately placed.

The objective of Sumi-e is not to recreate the subject to look perfectly like the original, but to capture its essence — that is, to express its essence. This is achieved not with more but with less....

Garr Reynolds, "Sumi-e, color, and the art of less," Presentation Zen, 6 Oct 2009,
www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2009/10/a-fundamental-design-and-life-lesson-from-the-zen-arts-is-to-never-use-more-when-less-will-do-this-goes-for-the-use-of-color.html