BOOK SUMMARY 196 Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products
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Summary written by: Ryan Long
"The care the machine’s designers took to shape the
whole user experience struck [Jony Ive]; he felt an immediate connection to the
machine and, more important, to the soul of the enterprise. It was the first
time he felt the humanity of a product."
- Jony Ive, page 28
I was
hoping for inspiration from Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s
Greatest Products, and inspiration is what I found.
I was
never an “Apple person”, although my company laptop is a MacBook Air.
While I don’t shout about the products from the rooftops, I have respect for
the products, engineering, design, and seemingly cult following of Mac and
Apple devices. I was excited to read about Jony Ive, the creative genius behind
many of the iDevices and where the innovation came from.
Below
are some of the areas of inspiration I found from Jony. I hope you read about
him and find your own inspiration as well.
The Golden Egg
More than just cool colors
"What
made the original iMac cool was not its color or shape. It was Apple’s
demonstrated willingness to open the possibilities of Internet computing to an
audience that had been ignored by the brainiacs who design PCs."- Jony
Ive, page 134
Starting
with the iMac in the late 90s, Apple began to think differently about who its
audience was and grew that following in a brand new way. Jony’s iMac focused on
the needs of the consumer, which was unprecedented in the computer or even the
electronics world. PCs were made to do what they needed to do in business and
designers were tasked with covering the machines in plastic to protect the
hardware. “The advent of the iMac meant ‘office products [were] being marketed
to teens.’”
I work
behind the scenes in recruiting and my company recruits students. Essentially
our “customers” are people aged 17-25. So what are the needs of the student
looking for part time work? There are several that we already inherently meet
in our program. Conversely, a huge influencer on the college students of today
are their parents. Over the last several months my team has started to think
about how to incorporate parents into our recruiting and advertising strategy.
This book confirms for me that we are headed in the right direction of thinking
differently about our audience and ultimately adding an audience.
Gem #1
He found the “I” in team
"Jony
is very protective of his design team… ‘He’ll take the blame personally for
screw ups … He’d fall on the sword for the weakest part of the design.’"-
Jony Ive, page 170
Jony
is considered the genius behind many of Apple’s most innovative products. While
he has won many, many awards for design he never hesitates nor forgets to give
credit to his whole team. I’ve seen many leaders give credit where it is due
and thank their teams for hard work, dedication, and inspiration. What I
haven’t often witnessed are leaders that will take the fall for mistakes their
team makes.
“Falling
on the sword” for your team is the most noble form of leadership. In a world
that is increasingly becoming a place where you must always defend actions and
mistakes, I can’t think of a better way to take care of your people and show
them how important they are than to take ownership of the mistakes as well as
share the credit for the victories. Jony has such a good team because he is an
amazing leader. If the only thing that I remember from this book is to protect
my team by falling on a few swords, it was more than worth the read.
Gem #2
The art is in the simplicity
"We
do everything we can to simplify design… When you look at it now, it seems so
simple, it seems so obvious, and yet again, the simplest, most efficient
solution has been the most elusive."- Jony Ive, page 190-191
I’ve
heard for years that Apple products are simple and intuitive. As a relatively
new Apple user, I don’t always think the interface is intuitive (although it
could be the Microsoft applications that I’m using on an Apple product due to
corporate compatibility requirements). While I don’t always love the user
interface, I can’t argue with the simplicity of design. Smaller, sleeker,
lighter, faster. These are ALWAYS adjectives that are used in conjunction with
Apple. So I’ve begun to ask myself how my team and my company can simplify some
of what we do, what we create, and what we say? I will do my best to
incorporate a “less is more” approach in my work.
There
are many more takeaways from Jony Ive than I could discuss here. While my
company may never be as widely known as Apple for innovation and thinking
differently, it doesn’t mean that we can’t put a little Jony magic into our
operations. While I was fascinated by the design talk in the book, that’s not
what I covered here. I would LOVE to hear what other readers find fascinating
about Jony and his designs and how they inspire you to be different.
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