Design

Apple Reinvents the Pencil

November 18, 2015 Design

Apple’s Chief Design Officer Jony Ive was in conversation with the Editor-in-Chief of Wallpaper magazine Tony Chambers on Apple Pencil, and spoke at length about the design of the device as well as Apple’s design philosophy in general.

I had declared before that the Pencil was going to take the world by storm with its innovative UI and multi-functionality design along with the iPad Pro. At the core of the design philosophy for Pencil, Jony says, was the ability to use a device to paint and draw:

What we found is that there’s clearly a group of people that would value an instrument that would enable then to paint or draw in ways that you just can’t with your finger. And I suspect that this isn’t a small group of people. I don’t think it’s confined to those of us who went to art school.

For some time after the Pencil’s announcement the world was up in arms quoting Steve Jobs on introducing a so-called “stylus”.  Apple was fundamentally violating a design principle because Steve Jobs famously considered using a stylus as a sign of product “failure”. In reality the Pencil augments the finger as Jony Ive describes it vividly in this quote:

the Pencil is for making marks, and the finger is a fundamental point of interface for everything within the operating system. And those are two very different activities with two very different goals.

Suggesting that the Pencil is more than just a stylus and not replacing the finger interaction which Steve Jobs implied. The Pencil is in fact a successful merger of human dexterity with innovative technology. In which the Pencil not only identifies hand pressure but also the tilt angle on the screen to offer a seamless screen interaction. We often discuss Apple being an organization in the forefront of using design-thinking methods for developing innovative products:

We do this a lot when we are working on things like the trackpad or new keyboard on the MacBook. To develop those sorts of devices requires an incredible amount of observation and measurement and it means that you need to ask the right questions and know what to focus on. This is part of the value of being a design team that’s been together for many years. We’ve been working on these problems for 20-plus years, so it’s an interesting area. And I think we are gaining experience, we are learning.

Jony also brought up Apple’s design method which does not involve Focus Groups which is a well-known fact again. Here’s his take on whether the feedback from his young kids proved useful in the design of the Pencil:

Apple does not do Focus Groups – So far, anecdotally – you know we don’t do focus groups – but anecdotally, certainly from what I’ve seen, with my children and friends’ children, they are captivated.

And finally, he left a valuable tip for aspiring designers to inculcate design culture in their work:

The design team at Apple uses sketchbooks and do lot of sketching – Yes, we all do. The whole team use sketchbooks. I think it’s a mixture of drawing either by yourself or when you’re with people flitting between conversation and drawing.

 

 

 

 

iPad Pro and Apple Pencil – First Impressions

November 16, 2015 Design Technology

With loads of emotions, I had been awaiting the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil launch since Apple announced the breakthrough products in September 2015. The day finally arrived last weekend when I visited the Apple Store.

Disappointingly, my first impression when I held the iPad Pro was it just felt like a normal iPad! It wasn’t anywhere closer to the picture I was harbouring in my mind, of a large sheet of fine glass and slightly bulky device. Somewhere that tweet about the iPad Pro form factor feeling like an iPad Air 2 came true. Or maybe what I was feeling with the iPad Pro was a victory for Apple’s ingenuity in industrial design! Making something as powerful as the iPad Pro and letting the ergonomics sync with the present generation iPads. The new Smart Keyboard as well is a well designed and an exclusive accessory for the Pro. On the flip side we will have to wait for the next iPad Pro version to see the breakthrough 3D Touch technology at work which made the iPhone 6S series special in so many ways.

The Pencil’s story is quite different. I had used the FiftyThree Pencil last year but wasn’t too happy with the pressure sensitivity and the woeful response of the ‘stylus’ on the iPad. It required me to hold the tip in a certain way to touch the screen to draw something. The tip was rubbery and basically the experience never felt closer to a real pencil which I was initially expecting when I bought the product. The Apple Pencil feels every bit like the real stuff. The tip is hard and sensitive and detects the pressure points quite beautifully. It works even when you tilt it. The Pencil and iPad Pro combination is exciting – both are meant to work together actually, and a perfect platform for artists or architects to run their imagination wild. I’m already foreseeing a new genre of digital artistic wave being generated as a result of this innovative product from Apple. Now with Evernote supporting Apple Pencil it’s no doubt a fantastic device for everyone (and doodling takes a whole new meaning). I can’t wait to see what the upgrade for these devices has to offer.

“We didn’t really do a stylus, we did a Pencil. The traditional stylus is fat, it has really bad latency so you’re sketching here and it’s filling the line in somewhere behind. You can’t sketch with something like that. You need something that mimics the look and feel of the pencil itself or you’re not going to replace it. We’re not trying to replace finger touch, we’re complementing it with the Pencil.” – Tim Cook

Understanding Designers

November 11, 2015 Design Technology

I received yet another email today from a recruitment agency for a ‘UI Developer’ position, and lately I have begun to doubt the industry’s understanding of the difference between ‘designers’ and ‘developers’. It’s also discouraging when recruiters email you saying “Hey, I have this great position for you…”, only to be left disappointed when you go through the job description which clearly mentions programming skills as a prerequisite! Especially when my résumé or online job profile does not even mention the word ‘developer’ anyplace, I can’t figure out how those emails land in my inbox. Obviously there are some recruiters acting under professional compulsions and fulfilling a different criteria. But merely having an understanding or liking for a programming language doesn’t turn me into a developer. So I take this opportunity to explain about the Designers as I know them in some detail here. 

Designers imagine to create things, and developers engineer to make them work.

Designers apply visual talents in their methods to bring an idea to life while developers apply their mathematical acumen to make that idea work. Even if these roles appear to be similar for some individuals, it should now be clear from that simple description how their responsibilities and perspectives are poles apart. For instance, designers thrive on user insights, picking or rejecting ideas intuitively depending on what would and wouldn’t work for the product. Empathy comes naturally to them because without knowing who to design for they can’t begin to imagine and create visuals. Or even if they do create something just out of their imagination it may not work well with the intended audience in the market. This is quite different from the painters or fine artists who use their vivid imaginations, colours and forms on the canvas to express their inner feelings and thoughts. On the other hand when you empathize with your users you stand in their shoes to feel their physical and emotional needs and pains. Designers have an inbred mechanism which helps them translate those inert perceptions into tangible creations making use of design-thinking tools such as prototyping, iteration and design. When you remove these cherished elements from a designer’s inventory you risk losing the overall individuality of the product itself.

Why is a designer so important? Designers represent the uniqueness of the brand. They breathe, drink, sleep; basically exist emotionally with the brand while integrating it into their personality, and hence are able to imagine countless possibilities for the product. Having empathized with their product’s core value they are able to distill rationale through the quagmire of scrutiny. Good designers are an invaluable asset to the organization because they can transform a product’s narrative with their creativity and design leadership. So when designers are reduced to being just an ‘apparatus’ to fulfill short-term goals, it hurts the business objectives and sabotages the future growth of the brand conclusively. In fact, the best organizations in the world value the contribution that designers bring on the table. They are nurtured not just as employees but as the ultimate custodians of the brand’s ethos and sanctity.

Designers do not automatically become developers if they develop an understanding of how things work. In fact that signifies they are smart enough to cross over (empathy) and comprehend the challenges of the developers which is an advantage for organizations who are dealing with complex big-data and large IT transformational projects. It’s important to bear in mind that customers are no longer satisfied with systems that simply work, rather they are habituated to a continuous rush of apps offering delightful experiences. A user’s expectations to reach a certain level of gratification has already reached manic proportions which can only be delivered through a good design strategy. In a fiercely competitive industry riding on the theme of customer experience, designers are the only individuals who can technically connect the dots, unify the aspirations of product teams into a single sequence, and filter the undesirable perceptions to form a substantial product strategy. To expect them to do anything else but design is quite honestly, suicidal.

PlayStation Virtual Reality

November 7, 2015 Design Technology

The Paris Games Week (PGW) concluded last week and I watched the PlayStation media event.

What has fascinated me from the beginning with the PlayStation (PS) console is the ‘Uncharted’ (UC) and ‘InFamous’ titles. ‘Uncharted – Among Thieves’ was the first title (Part 2 in the series actually) that I got my hands on , and I was completely stunned with the gameplay and the graphics. It’s much like watching a movie actually. After that I have played almost all the ‘Uncharted’ titles to date. The much anticipated ‘Uncharted 4 – A Thief’s End’ was announced at the PGW to be released on 18-March 2016, it’s the last title in this ambitious series. The sadness over its culmination has overtaken the excitement from the launch. Guerrilla Games’ ‘Horizons Zero Dawn’ was good in terms of gameplay.

But the highlight of the event for me was definitely the demonstration of PlayStation VR. While Facebook has longterm goals for Oculus, Sony has already announced some terrific exclusive titles like ‘Robinson – The Journey’ for the VR platform, and many others. Looks like VR may finally become a mainstream reality soon and can’t wait to get my hands on it.

About Stars and Hearts!

November 5, 2015 Design

Twitter changed the icon for its ‘Favorite’ tweet feature, from a Star to a Heart. A seemingly small aesthetic change for the Twitterverse to react with surprise and angst! Design updates in digital products haven’t been easier for designers to interpret as organizations and users have embraced design changes half-heartedly for a number of reasons.

The longer a system exists the greater the amount of comfort and trust the users build around its framework. After all this the ultimate goal of following usability principles. These emotional aspects of user behaviour also exist even with badly designed systems. It means any amount of change in the system is met with shock and discontent by the user groups since they need to develop a fresh perspective around the brand. It’s not so simple to drive design changes.

Design transitions are also harder because it affects behavioural changes and users resist any change in their ‘relationship’ with the software overall. Twitter was perceived as ‘violating’ that loving ‘relationship’ of the users with the ‘Favorite’ starry icon by replacing it with a Heart. Though I personally believe that making a ‘favourite’ is a matter of the heart which is better represented by the ‘heart’ sign than a ‘star’ sign. In the end, designers must make users see the value brought by the design changes by bringing them closer to achieving their goals more efficiently than before. The aesthetic changes need to be scrutinized through a branding review as well. Twitter has done its homework:

The heart, in contrast, is a universal symbol that resonates across languages, cultures, and time zones. The heart is more expressive, enabling you to convey a range of emotions and easily connect with people. And in our tests, we found that people loved it.