Because of CES last week and MacWorld this week, there were several articles in the business press discussing how computer and consumer electronics companies were planning to counter Apple Inc.’s dominance of their product categories. Apple’s success is now the model to follow for manufacturers of everything from music players and music download systems to computers, phones, even retail stores.
Unfortunately, the understanding most of these reporters have of design (and Apple’s success) is just as limited and shallow as those companies retooling to add fancy colors, materials, and shapes to their offerings. Design is equated only as style and fashion and nothing more. It’s a common mistake that most of corporate America makes over and over (just witness General Motors and Ford's long descent from leadership and success).
Design, because it does encompass visual design and appearance, often gets defined only in these terms. This is a problem for the design industry—especially for those designers and companies who use design strategically. Product and service development, and the experiences surrounding them (and not to mention corporate brands) are enhanced by strategic design. Apple’s products, in particular, serve as an informing example of strategic design.
Most non-designers look at Apple’s products as objects of fashion. Part of this is due to the colorful advertising surround some of Apple’s products, like the iPod. However, many designers look at Apple’s products, from the iPod to the Macintosh to its many accessories as almost anti-design. Apple’s industrial design is so reduced and sober and
But while companies like Dell and Philips see “elegant design” and are rushing to add color choices and curved edges to their products, what they aren’t seeing is the design that influences the engineering, the interface, the size, and the decisions about what features and behaviors each device should offer in order to provide value to customers. This is all design, too. Design both informs and shapes solutions to needs and wants and is the core of meaningful, sustainable, and successful innovation. Design shapes structure and meaning as well as form, brand and messaging as well as appearance, and works hand-in-hand with engineering, marketing, manufacturing, and operations to create offerings that transform industries, not merely dress-up current products and services.
Apple uses design to transform their offerings in every way: from integrating consistent actions across hardware, software, and environment, to dematerializing every milligram of unnecessary material (thereby making their products less expensive, stronger, and more sustainable), to material selection that substantially reduces manufacturing costs and eliminates extraneous materials (many of which are toxic), to offering services that competitors can't match and only "see" once they're introduced by Apple (such as their approach to the retail experience). Apple isn't the only company doing this, of course. Nike has done the same in even more categories. Starbucks has transformed the business of beverages. Target has effectively thwarted Wal*Mart's threat to offer value that Wal*Mart can't (and, thus, stay alive). This isn't about typefaces and colors. It's about business strategy and design-led innovation. The companies that use design strategically are leaders in their industries and sectors.
So, by this time next year—or even by June—you may see a spate of new “fashionably” products but most of them won’t perform like their companies hope because their beauty will be only that and only skin deep.