Does anyone know anyone that works on the Apple design team? I heard it was a pretty small group.
besides him. how many total people are on the team?
deez, laughing out loud.
All their salaries are over $200K. Pay for talent and pay to keep them quiet.
Living there you need it!
I visited the campus about a year ago and was surprised how understated it is. I was picturing the architecture to be more monumental visually. I didn’t get to peek behind any curtains though, I’d imagine it would be a sweet place to be.
Think you must be spoiled at the Nike Campus, Yo. Very impressive.
Not to get too off topic, but does anyone here know first hand anyone at apple or the organization of the different design teams? I would imagine there must be different groups working on hardware, accessories, etc.
Surely either way must be a great environment to work. Based on the product coming out of Cupertino, they surely put their designers on a pedstal!
R
For as much as I imagine the work environment at Apple is design forward, I can’t help but wonder who bears the brunt of the manufacturability/profitability issues. If it’s just concept modelling that the Apple ID team is responsible for, it seems that a lot of their material is prior art or could be scrounged in ID institutions. I suppose it is all just a means to the inevitably groundbreaking end, but seriously, what comes first, the manufacturing capability chicken, or the concept model issue egg?
Is 200k the top end for ID?
In apple’s case I would guess it’s a bit of both, a half formed chicken, with a half formed egg… In the end they probably have the genetically engineer their chicken to get the egg they want… this analogy might have gone too far…
Is 200k not enough?
I don’t look at much of what Apple does and go…hmmm…how the hell did they do that? I have yet to see a process that didn’t pre-exist, or something that isn’t manufacturable.
That said, being manufacturable and being manufacturable without making your operation group’s hair fall out in clumps is a whole other story. The iPod is a rework nightmare. Once that thing is snapped together its done.
My guess is that its the big chicken (Jobs) jamming the egg down the throats of the operations group saying, “this is cool, I want it built, make it so”.
I recommend picking up a copy of AppleDesign. It covers the story of the design studio up until the new Jobs/Ives era.
What’s changed since then? From what I’ve read…
Jobs is the “chief Design Officer” and does play an influential role as Ives boss.
Industrial Design has much more influence.
They do an “embarassing amount” of prototyping.
They don’t do user testing or focus groups anymore.
Steve makes the final design decisions.
The iPod form-factor, controls etc. did not come from ID.
Their designers spend at least 1/2 their time at the factory.
They do an “embarassing amount” of prototyping.
I wonder how many prototypes that means.
The prototyping bar has already been raised embarrassingly high by Mr.James “a-thousand-prototypes-later-I-got-it” Dyson.
Not that I’m complaining -His slogan has certainly helped us convince clients that we need more than one prototype to get things just right.
That must be some book! $200.00 is a little more than I can part with right now. Maybe I can find it at the library.