Design

2018 Apple MacBook Pro

2018 Was An Impressive Year For Apple

November 3, 2018 Design Technology

We’re still a few weeks from saying our goodbyes to 2018, and unless Apple is planning to hold an unprecedented fifth keynote this year, 2018 will go down in history as the year when Apple launched a range of innovative products. In the hype and the hoopla that generally accompanies all Apple events; some individuals might even be vindicated in assuming they are just normal product launches, although undoubtedly the company has given us a sneak peek into its future direction of integrating the best-in-class design and tech elements into great-looking, innovative products. In short, there has never been an exciting moment to anticipate which product and tech iteration Apple would demonstrate at their next glittering event.

2018 should set the tone for Apple’s future design roadmap

It was last year when Apple’s approach in breakthrough hardware and software design gained fruition and we finally began to see the perfection with Apple’s design iterations. To cite an example, it was September 2017, when along with the Apple Watch Series 3, the Apple TV 4K, the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus, Apple unveiled a revolutionary form factor of its flagship product the iPhone X on its tenth anniversary. The bezel-less design of the iPhone X was what impressed many, a paradigm shift in the iPhone ergonomics that was hitherto accompanied by a home button. The new form factor certainly met the expectations of the markets but then it was also the introduction of the Face ID technology a new generation of secure digital authentication which also made a mark. In a nutshell, that event marked a significant detour in the way products were going to be designed and integrated with advanced technology. In fact, not very long ago, I had mentioned a critical aspect of Apple’s future design roadmap that was supportive of modern & imminent technologies and in the process, they were also influencing behaviour change with user interaction. That being said here’s what I liked from Apple’s ‘orchard’ this 2018, 3 revolutionary product ideas with their underlying hi-tech, that I believe would eventually transform the way we interact with the world around us, and my strategic learning from the product launches so far.

Design Iterations in the form factor for the iMac
Instance of design iterations in the form factor for the iMac

The product design philosophy of Apple could be easily summarized with this insightful quote by French aviator and poet Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, he says, “perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” That sentiment is so deeply ingrained in every aspect of Apple’s design DNA.

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McKinsey Admits, Design Adds Value To Business

October 26, 2018 Design
McKinsey - The Business Value of Design
Download Full Report (PDF – 6MB)

McKinsey published an insightful report correlating the value of design in business, with increased revenues and shareholder returns. As I began reading I thought I would take some notes and share it here as a reminder to me, as well as businesses, that design wouldn’t work as a temporary measure. It has to be integrated holistically within the long-term growth opportunities of the company, which includes, nurturing top talent, investing in design infrastructure, senior management & C-suite engagement, and a culture of collaboration amongst cross-functional teams. In that, I can only cite Apple’s example of a continual focus on developing products which combine the theories of service design, hardware, and software, in producing assets of greater value to its customers.

The Business Value of Design – McKinsey Design Report

  • This is the most extensive and rigorous research undertaken by McKinsey to study actions that leaders could make in unlocking the business value using design.
  • Companies like Amazon have demonstrated the obvious commercial benefits of designing great products and services, increasingly blurring the lines between hardware, software, and services. Today, companies need stronger design capabilities than ever before.
  • So how do companies deliver exceptional designs and what the worth of design? McKinsey tracked the design practices of 300 publicly listed companies over a five-year period in multiple countries and industries, and interviewed senior design leaders.
  • The companies were rated using the ‘McKinsey Design Index’ (MDI) demonstrating the insights correlating to their design capabilities and revenues.
  • A high MDI score correlated to superior business performance. An increase in revenues and total returns to shareholders for the top-quartile MDI scorers.
  • The results suggest “that good design matters whether your company focuses on physical goods, digital products, services, or some combination of these.”
  • There are more opportunities for pursuing user-centric, analytically informed design today with customers & companies feeding opinions in real time with each other. Social media, for instance, offers faster access to real customers and also through smart devices allowing companies to place the user at the centre of business decisions.

Over 40 percent of the companies surveyed still aren’t talking to their end users during development. Just over 50 percent admitted that they have no objective way to assess or set targets for the output of their design teams. With no clear way to link design to business health, senior leader are often reluctant to divert scarce resources to design functions.

  • McKinsey has categorised ’The Value of Design’ into 4 themes – Analytical leadership, Cross-functional talent, Continuous iteration and User experience. The top-quartile companies in the field of design and who are leading financial performers excelled in all four areas.
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Shazam A Song, Just Like That!

October 6, 2018 Design Happenings Technology
Shazam

I was late in discovering Shazam, just like some other apps, but I don’t regret it. I love listening to any form of music and being an ‘old schooler’, the “independent” sorts, I’ve not pledged my allegiance to either Apple Music or Spotify, although it’s becoming inevitable to avoid. Meanwhile, I’m satisfying my urge of listening to soul-stirring melodies through the droves of FM stations of this city who cycle their playlists like kids on a carousel ride, so you can’t miss out on any song now, can you? I also follow an alternative method to understand & discover different kinds of sounds, by visiting the various outlets & malls in & around Toronto. As I’m sifting through the garments or enjoying a meal I’m patiently listening to a soothing melody or a foot tapping anthem that would eventually stick in my head and wouldn’t let me breathe easy until I’m able to locate its creator’s credentials. Ugh! And a Google search would only be fruitful if I got the lyrics right which is challenging in all that chitter chatter in the vicinity, so Nah! Enter, Shazam.

Though I was always intrigued by this nifty app since even before Apple acquired it there wasn’t a practical use for me to experiment with Shazam, but its time had finally arrived. It was simple. I launched it and found the circular ‘S’ logo throbbing and inviting me to tap as a tune played at a busy H&M outlet. Even though it was faintly audible the microphone on the iPhone deftly captured the notes, and in a jiffy, it displayed not only the name of the artist but also the colourful album art, the lyrics, while giving me the choice to buy it on Apple Music. It also added it to a ‘My Shazam’ playlist so I won’t lose the information! The ‘Shazam-ing’ is so seamless & quick and searching for new music has become simpler and more exciting, and enjoyable now. No more anxiety over unknown melodies, eh. I never thought I’d say this but then Google feels weak for a change! So, if you’re late to the party just like me, give it a shot.

Lara Croft & The Mayan Jungle Adventure!

September 15, 2018 Design General

I was pretty excited to grab my copy of the ‘Shadow of the Tomb Raider’ (SOTR) this week, and a good 2 days before the official launch since I preordered. It also happens to be my first PS4 steelbook case title. The ‘Croft Steelbook Edition’ is a limited edition title that includes a Season Pass, 3 additional weapons & outfits, original game soundtrack, and 3 Art Cards which are basically artworks of Lara Croft in action. Besides everything, I was drawn towards the ‘Season Pass’ which was a deal breaker for me in the sense it gave me more side missions to play apart from the main story; I’m told, there are 7 Challenge Tombs, each with new narrative side missions, as well as 7 Weapons, 7 Outfits, and 7 Skills available with the DLC ‘Season Pass’. Let me also say this, that it’s a gorgeous design of the steelbook case inside and it feels like I’m holding an ancient document.

I am looking forward to diving into SOTR after experiencing the storyline in the cult prequels of the ‘Tomb Raider – Definitive Edition’ and the ‘Rise of the Tomb Raider – 20 Year Celebration’ both with out-of-world gaming and storytelling. Effectively I’m completing a trilogy, and until I play the entire SOTR I’m not sure if this would be the final episode with Lara Croft and her tryst with destiny — it’d be really tragic after Naughty Dog wiped clean Nathan Drake’s existence from the ‘Uncharted’ series (another of my favourite franchises), but keeping fingers crossed for Lara’s upcoming adventures.

For the time being though, I will bask in the glory of discovering & collecting numerous ancient relics & documents (called ‘collectibles’) and completing the challenges, then beat the extraordinary tomb puzzles and fight the battle-hardened forces of the evil Trinity forces but this time in the deep jungles of South & Central America laced with awesome environments and screenplay. I may detest the end of Lara Croft’s exhilarating adventures just as I did with Nathan Drake, but not so soon.

Civilization - The Last of Us

Our Civilization & How Everything Could End

August 5, 2018 Design General

A nuanced study of our civilization has always appealed to my faculty, by connecting with multiple cultural conventions of diverse user groups through the prism of technology & design I can synthesize & draw conclusions from their unique behavioral & cultural patterns, so I was thrilled listening to an episode from the Software Engineering Daily (SED) podcast which reinforced my beliefs in that direction. It was in July that I stumbled upon Tim O’Reilly’s book What’s The Future (what a clever wordplay of WTF) and found a piece of ominous foresight by the author from the insightful podcast. He was responding to the question, How do you contrast the role of human agency versus the positioning of these technologies as being inevitabilities? And Tim responded with a sense of grim:

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You know, I think some ways this goes back to this disagreement I had many years ago with Ray Kurzweil. Where he would draw these graphs and say, “Well look, progress goes up into the right,” and I said, “Well, yeah, from a distance,” sure but you know, if you look for example at architecture, the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul was for a thousand years, the largest building in the world.

Because we lost the knowledge of how to build something like that. You could have on human time scales, an immense slowing down or reversal of progress. I think part of what we need to understand is that first of all, nothing is inevitable. I think that we face enormous discontinuities and anyone who looks at history will see those even in human timeframes where there were great empires that fell. Where there were civilizations that collapse and I don’t see any reason why ours might not be among them. In fact, I think it’s more likely than not that ours will be among them and so the notion of progress is also something that I think is profoundly suspect.

You know, are we really more advanced? If you think about adaptation to the environment, maybe humans are not so very advanced after all, we are kind of destroying our environment in 10,000 years of our rise and will we effectively foul our nest sufficiently that we won’t be able to continue to prosper?

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But then he describes, what I term as, his vision of an environmental catastrophe which could materialize as a result of a ‘climate change’ phenomena — a change in global or regional weather patterns attributed largely to the increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide produced by the use of fossil fuels, which is demonstrating its ruthless power in real-time with the extended periods of hot summers or excessive rainfall to droughts in most parts of the world.

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I think I like to focus, yes, there are long-term trends that have momentum that have a powerful vector behind them but that doesn’t mean that they’re inevitable because first of all, there are other intersecting vectors. It’s so interesting, one of the said people I’ve invited to our science
bootcamp event or a couple of scholars who have been researching the interaction between climate change and the fall of civilizations.

Both of them – there’s a group at Harvard that has basically done ice cores in Greenland then it’s just basically correlated historical events through roman and early medieval civilization with climate change events. We have also one of the other people while study is the fall of ancient again civilizations and again, looking at the combination of climate change, you know, triggering a disease and then triggering migration, triggering warfare and that kind of being this toxic stew that brings civilizations to an end.

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That last bit of prudence in “triggering a disease” also brought flashes from the critically acclaimed action-adventure horror game ‘The Last Of Us’ the plot of which deals with a mysterious virus called Cordyceps ravaging the United States leaving not just an infected civilization but eventually destroying it; the premise of which is the effect of ‘climate change’. The game beautifully captures the mass migration of the survivors from coast to coast and puts the gamer in the midst of a warfare with rival gangs who are fighting for the control of rare resources in their neighbourhoods, not to mention combating the scary ghoulish creatures who prey upon their unsuspecting victims. It’s a captivating glimpse of a combination of catastrophic outcomes that O’Reilly has insightfully referred to in his prediction of how our civilization could end realistically.

The entire episode is worth listening and you can enjoy it in a new tab/window.