Designers: 10 things you can learn from Apple
Love ‘em or hate ‘em, you have to admit that Apple knows what it’s doing when it comes to product design. I stumbled across a great article over at Basement.org: 10 Things We Can Learn From Apple. Think about it: here is a company that turned itself around and went from being a minority player to a major trendsetter in technology. How did they do it, and can the lessons we learn from Apple be applied to other businesses and industries?
Some of my favourite points:
- Apple is not a software company. It’s also not a hardware company. It’s an experience company.
- How many other companies do you know of that introduce a product line personally?
- Mimic real world artifacts and make things feel less like technology devices and more like something you’d find in the real world.
- Apple designs every single thing they sell knowing that it will be touched by a person.
For me, points 3 and 4 really resonate. Just about everything Apple builds looks good enough to touch/lick/taste. They pay attention to the overall design, both hardware and software.
I have an HP notebook on which I run Ubuntu Linux and occasionally Vista. While the HP is a solid little performer, it looks clunky as hell and feels cheap. I don’t get the same tactile pleasure using it as I do when I use my MacBook.