Jony Ive, User-Centered Designer
Introduction
For this project, I chose Jonathan Ive, the Outgoing Chief Design Officer at Apple as of 2019. Since 1996 Ive has helped design and develop huge projects such as the iMac, Power Mac G4 Cube, iPod, iPhone, iPad, Macbook, Apple Watch, and the user interface of Apple’s mobile phone operating system iOS. I chose Jony Ive for this product for the simple fact of how intensely apple products rely on user-centered design and how Apple and Ive have worked carefully to advance personal technology over the past decade.
Jony studied Art and Design at Newcastle Polytechnic. Here he earned the Royal Society of Arts’ Student Design award. He would later earn the title of royal designer for industry. Ive also holds honorary doctorates from the Royal College of Art, the Rhode Island School of Design and Northumbria University. Ive was also made a knight commander of the British Empire in 2013 for his service in design.
The Apple Watch
Apple’s Designed have been undoubtedly some of the most groundbreaking and influential pieces of technology. The iPhone revolutionized the cell phone and personal media industry. The iPhone’s simple and user-friendly design exemplified and benchmarked user-centered design for personal phones at the time.
Since the original iPhone Apple has continued to innovate and develop products and software that respond directly to the user’s needs. Of the most recent products from Apple is the revolutionary Apple Watch. The Apple Watch is not the first mini computer you can strap to your wrist however when compared to other companies, it is far from the same wearable tech. The Apple Watch was the first product Jonathan helped develop after the passing of Steve Jobs.
Methods and/or Principles
The Apple Watch, unlike the iPhone, has a more personal connection to the users and had to be designed as such. Health and wellness information is one of the greatest most revolutionary aspects of the watches design and over the course of five iterations has only seen exponential advancements. Ive states in an interview with Hodinkee that “An early and significant focus was developing both the hardware and software to form the foundation for all of the health-based capabilities.” Ive even stated that he has received letters from owners of the watch stating how grateful they are for the health and motivation features.
Target Audience
Apple products are designed to make life better through innovation and usability. The influence of Apple products in our daily lives since the creation of the iPhone has been huge. Apple continues to innovate and develop products to assist our lives in ways we wouldn’t first think of. This being said, Apple’s target audience is simply everyone, from young people to the elderly and everyone in-between, Apple continues to develop sleek, beautiful and highly usable products.
The Value of User-Centered Design
Ive states his design process could be described with two words “ease and simplicity” with is a short and sweet definition for User-Centered design. Placing a user in the center of the product experience is what Apple strives for. like Steve Jobs said Apple is not selling products, it is selling experiences. Every single detail of the Apple Watch and other products that came before it is centered around the consumer/user’s experience with the product. I interviewed a fellow friend of mine and design student at Kent State University. He stated, “I’ve always been a hardcore Apple fanboy and have purchased every new product since I could afford it. I remember saving money in high school to buy the first Apple Watch Series 1. Being a runner I had always used my Garmin GPS watch but I still wanted a smartwatch that would seamlessly work with my iPhone and be an extension of not only the phone but also of myself. Series 1 was a great watch but was not perfect, one of my main concerns was the exclusion of GPS capabilities, the watch did have a form of making up for this with location memory, however, it wasn’t the same as my Garmin.” He then stated when asked about how User-centered design affected the next series that, “I was very pleased to find out that the series 2 of the watch would have GPS integration among other upgrades, this really shows how Apple was able to create an amazing product, get feedback from the user’s and develop a better experience, even now with the new Series 5 we can see developments that nobody thought could be possible back when the Series 1 was released such has ECG readings and always-on display.” My friend Josh Szink could not have described how the Apple Watch and Ive’s designs have been directly influenced by the user’s feedback and needs which lead to new innovations in later iterations of the watch.
