"If it ain't broke..."

I found it somewhat timely/appropriate to read Buxton’s case study on Apple (and Steve Jobs) in Sketching User Experiences this week. With Jobs recent passing, there was an outpouring of information and emotion, and this chapter felt like another piece of the puzzle. After seeing post after post on Facebook with the “Stay hungry. Stay foolish” quote, and the posting of the Stanford commencement address, it was interesting to read a business study of Jobs without the sentiment.

According to Buxton, the first step that Jobs took to turn Apple around was the redesign of the product. Buxton says of the iMac, “that virtually all of the changes were … on the front side of the glass” (46). It was the look of the machine, the neon colors and shape of the body, that made it popular, not the “guts.” In fact, “underlying these systems was the old familiar graphical user interface (GUI), with perhaps a bit of an updating in graphical style” (Buxton 46). Of course, the updating in graphical style is just another instance of redesign, which is Buxton’s point. There was no need to reinvent the wheel, Jobs just made it more visually appealing.

While function is important, many designers forget that visual appeal is just as, if not more, important. After all, we as designers can create an amazing web site that does things no other has done before, but if it is over- or under-designed, it’s not going to get a second look from the user. Even though Buxton points out that Jobs make mistakes and encountered failures, it was the risk he took with design that saved the company. Or more than saved it. So while we must be concerned with design, we must also take risks. Mistakes can be reengineered, and signature elements can be improved upon.

When the iPod was introduced in 2001, it had a mechanical scroll wheel (Buxton 56). This scroll wheel and the shape of the screen became the symbols for the iPod. (As well as the white ear buds that make the iPod recognizable, even when it’s tucked away in a pocket (Buxton 53)). While the mechanical scroll wheel had its issues, the idea behind it was solid. Today, the iPod still maintains the circular wheel, but it is now a touch-sensitive controller. The functionality it the same, the design is (somewhat) the same, but the mechanics have improved.

As designers, we sometimes create our initial design and then put all of our energy in function. But what can we learn from Steve Jobs? Buxton says that “each generation of the iPod has its design problems, but these were more than compensated for by the iPod’s strengths as a fashion item” (50). I think what we can learn from Jobs it to put just as much thought into design as we do into function. If a product is designed well enough, the customer can become loyal through all of the functional improvements. And once the bugs are worked out, we shouldn’t rest.  After all, we’ve all heard “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” but that doesn’t mean we can’t redesign it.