Why you’ll never design like Apple
David sent round a great article last week which I happily read on my commute home, happily because it helps me answer the increasing number of clients and colleagues that want every user experience to feel and innovate like Apple.
In “You Can’t Innovate Like Apple” [PDF], Alain Breillatt takes apart the culture, processes and economics behind the much-fêted and plagiarised technology company. Where this article differs from the wealth of Apple-gazing elsewhere is that is is derived from original research and pragmatic business objectivity.
I do urge you to read Alain’s article but, if you’re short of time and just need some bullet points for a lame presentation or a one-to-one with your boss, here’s the succint version:
- Pixel perfect mock-ups, lots of ‘em.
- Refine from 10 concepts, to 3 to 1.
- No (formal) market research
- Small, world-leading design teams
- Ownership of the entire process
- Slim product lines
- Maniacal attention to detail & pursuit of perfection.
- Inspirational leadership, focussed loyal footsoldiers.
- Reward.
Off you pop, go read the piece.
In other news
This is IA continues to develop with a few more postings going online this week. anything you see that you think represents IA in the real world would be gladly appreciated.
I’m contributing next week to the working party at the IPA looking in to Behavioural Economics, hopefully this will culminate in a published whitepaper where we can take the opportunity to demonstrate the the field of Information Architecture within (digital) advertising are already well-versed in Nudge techniques.
Last week I produced a document I’m pretty proud of. I managed to combine a comprehensive sitemap (exploring five tiers deep) which formed the basis of four additional layered views of a particular site demonstrating:
1. Visitor activity (sitemap nodes were coloured in a heatmap spectrum to denote the ‘heat’ of traffic)
2. Proportional size of channels, sections and domains – represented by proportional node bubbles.
3. Templates and compliance to current brand guidelines – which pages were on/off brand.
4. Technology – whether pages were active or static.
The sitemaps were printed nearly 2m across (A0 size) providing the first birds-eye view of the vast territory that this client was responsible for online. I’m happy to share anonymised visuals of these on request.
Enough with the chest-puffing already. Until we speak again.
