We shouldn’t be afraid to fail – if we are not failing we are not pushing. 80% of the stuff in the studio is not going to work. If something is not good enough, stop doing it.
Different and new is relatively easy. Doing something that’s genuinely better is very hard.
Simplicity is not the absence of clutter, that’s a consequence of simplicity. Simplicity is somehow essentially describing the purpose and place of an object and product. The absence of clutter is just a clutter-free product. That’s not simple.
Very often design is the most immediate way of defining what products become in people’s minds.
A small change at the beginning of the design process defines an entirely different product at the end.
We don’t do focus groups – that is the job of the designer. It’s unfair to ask people who don’t have a sense of the opportunities of tomorrow from the context of today to design.
Its difficult to do something radically new, unless you are at the heart of a company.
Really great design is hard. Good is the enemy of great. Competent design is not too much of a stretch. But if you are trying to do something new, you have challenges on so many axes.
We don’t do focus groups – that is the job of the designer.
One of the hallmarks of the team is this sense of looking to be wrong. It’s the inquisitiveness, and sense of exploration. It’s about being excited to be wrong, because then you’ve discovered something new.
A lot of what we are doing is getting design out of the way.
The best ideas start as conversations.
There are 9 rejected ideas for every idea that works.
Making the solution seem so completely inevitable and obvious, so uncontrived and natural – it’s so hard!
When you’re trying to solve a problem on a new product type, you become completely focused on problems that seem a number of steps removed from the main product. That problem solving can appear a little abstract, and it is easy to lose sight of the product.
If you are truly innovating, you don’t have a prototype you can refer to.
Perhaps I’d like to design cars, but I don’t think I’d be much good at it.
The absence of clutter is just a clutter-free product. That’s not simple.
To do something innovative means that you reject reason.
What we make testifies who we are. People can sense care and can sense carelessness.