Apple wants to hire lead designer from inside, but having problems

AppleInsider

Evans Hankey, Apple's vice president of industrial design, is leaving, and the company is having trouble finding a replacement.

Apple Park

Hankey and Alan Dye took leadership positions within the team after Jony Ive's departure. A report on October 21 said that Hankey plans to stick around for the next six months.

According to Bloomberg, turnover at Apple is interfering with efforts to replace Hankey, who had been at the company for around 20 years. The company reportedly doesn't have a clear succession plan for the design position.

Some team members also followed Ive when he started his own company, LoveFrom.

Ive moved into a part-time role in 2015 before departing in 2019. That same year, other Apple designers left, including Rico Zorkendorfer, Julian Hoenig, Miklu Silvanto, and Daniele De Iuliis.

Since then, at least 15 of Ive's senior design team members have left Apple. According to a source, Hankey will leave in spring 2023 -- but doesn't plan to join LoveFrom.

A small group of senior industrial designers at Apple includes Duncan Kerr, Bart Andre, Richard Howarth, Peter Russell-Clarke, and Ben Shaffer. Howarth, who has been with Apple for 26 years, briefly served as head of industrial design between 2015 and 2017 but reportedly struggled in the position.

Apple probably isn't going to hire a brand-new person for such an important position. So instead, looking to current employees or former designers is more likely.

"It would need to be someone internal," said a member of Apple's design group, adding that hiring from another company would be the "death of the team."

Read on AppleInsider

tht

Senior executive positions are management positions. Management as in attending meetings, personnel evaluation, dealing with money and people. It takes a certain type of personality and if you really enjoy doing technical things, giving that up. It's always hard to find the right person for such positions. Companies typically find someone. 

retrogusto

As someone who admittedly does not fully understand how the industrial design process works in a large company, it seems funny that they need a whole team of full-time people to design a small range of products, most of which barely change in their appearance from year to year. I’d be interested to know where all of the work goes. Even the Watch Ultra and the Mac Studio are essentially evolutions of existing designs, and the other products are nearly identical in outward appearance from year to year, with big changes occurring only rarely (with the Siri Remote redesign a notable exception). But maybe the trick is in maintaining the look as the technology inside develops. 

daalseth

retrogusto said:

As someone who admittedly does not fully understand how the industrial design process works in a large company, it seems funny that they need a whole team of full-time people to design a small range of products, most of which barely change in their appearance from year to year. I’d be interested to know where all of the work goes. Even the Watch Ultra and the Mac Studio are essentially evolutions of existing designs, and the other products are nearly identical in outward appearance from year to year, with big changes occurring only rarely (with the Siri Remote redesign a notable exception). But maybe the trick is in maintaining the look as the technology inside develops. 

I’ve been involved with this sort of thing, albeit on a much smaller level. It is a real balancing act to keep the devices from not changing radically between iterations. I’m sure there were loud “discussions” when they subject of the camera bump came up. Design wants one thing, engineering says something else is needed, the laws of physics can trump both of them. Keeping all sides on the same script is the job of the lead designer. I have a feeling that the Mac Studio started as an evolution of the Mini. “But you need a cooling system HOW big?” But they wanted to maintain a common familial feel with the older design. The next Mini will likely share some design choices from the Studio. Then there’s the details. One side saying keep the design clean and seamless, and another one that wants a dozen ports of various kinds on the front and back. One says it has to have a cooling fan, another says no moving parts, and on and on. It’s not an easy job. In many ways getting the engineers, and designers, and circuit board team, and all pushing in the same direction is like the proverbial herding cats. 

danox

Hire from within Apple remember the retail fiasco's two outside duds in a row, Apple needs a person who can hit the ground running.

edited November 2022

jintech

danox said:

Hire from within Apple remember the retail fiasco's two outside duds in a row, Apple needs a person who can hit the ground running.

They ought to bring Ron Johnson back!

But back on the subject, I do hope they find someone within as an outsider could disturb Apple's design fabric.

mattinoz

Why have just One?

Each product line surely has it's own lead designer get all those people in a room to peer review each other on a regular basis, make sure each is not only able the sell the direction of the product they foster but can see how what is being learnt from that translates. 

Apple will end up with 1/2 dozen or more better designers that way no structural need single banner designer. If one naturally emerges from the process than good.

sabon

retrogusto said:

As someone who admittedly does not fully understand how the industrial design process works in a large company, it seems funny that they need a whole team of full-time people to design a small range of products, most of which barely change in their appearance from year to year. I’d be interested to know where all of the work goes. Even the Watch Ultra and the Mac Studio are essentially evolutions of existing designs, and the other products are nearly identical in outward appearance from year to year, with big changes occurring only rarely (with the Siri Remote redesign a notable exception). But maybe the trick is in maintaining the look as the technology inside develops. 

Just because the outside doesn't appear to have changed much, that doesn't mean that there haven't been a lot more changes inside than you think.

Going from Bluetooth 5.0 to 5.2 doesn't mean just dropping in a new module. Almost always the shape and size on parts change from generation to generation and the designers have to take that into account. They also have to make sure that there is no interference with any new generation of wifi or bluetooth. The size of the system on a chip changes from model to model. ALL of the parts have the possibility of changing size and shape from year to year.

And that's if you "just" want to upgrade to the newest standard. But there are other new technologies that come along. You don't just take everything and plug them in. You have to ask yourself "what exactly does this give us"? Now if you are using all off the shelf parts like most computer hardware designers do for Windows computers it really doesn't matter since all of the computers are basically the same except maybe build quality and manufacturer of your 3rd party parts.

But Apple isn't just another PC Builder. They want and NEED to be different than anyone else. Otherwise why buy an Apple computer vs HP or Dell or whoever? The lead designer has to work with upper management Tim Cook and the top and many other levels of engineers to make sure that the right choices are made with new technologies. Again, you don't just plug in something. You talk to key top people in Apple and find out what is possible and how much power it takes to run it and is it worth it, what does it get you that other companies can't or won't do or will try to copy.

Why bother adding something that is easy to copy. That is why Apple designs their own chips as much as possible. They want to make it as easy as possible for themselves for the lowest price while making it as hard as possible and expensive as possible to replicate in Windows or Android.

Certain groups of people are always clamoring for more ports or more this or more that. If you have no taste (Bill Gates) then you would end up with an ugly looking product and Apple prides itself in having lots of taste to often as possible make things look beautiful and if possible, "magical", it not in hardware than software.

And software is where it ultimately always ends up. The lead designer isn't just thinking about how it looks, how much energy it takes to run but also in what ways can Apple's systems be and look unique compared to Windows or Android but with taste instead of putting lipstick on a pig.

99.9999999% of people are earth would not be the right people for this position in Apple. I'm probably short quite a few 9s there. Neither you nor I understand more than 5% of what it takes to be a lead designer in Apple. Yes, it is like herding cats. Everyone has an opinion and your companies profit margins and reputation are at stake with every product shipped and if you "f" it up, there goes the entire history of your company. I wouldn't want that position.

fastasleep

retrogusto said:

As someone who admittedly does not fully understand how the industrial design process works in a large company, it seems funny that they need a whole team of full-time people to design a small range of products, most of which barely change in their appearance from year to year. I’d be interested to know where all of the work goes. Even the Watch Ultra and the Mac Studio are essentially evolutions of existing designs, and the other products are nearly identical in outward appearance from year to year, with big changes occurring only rarely (with the Siri Remote redesign a notable exception). But maybe the trick is in maintaining the look as the technology inside develops. 

You should've stopped at "does not fully understand" before asserting design is only about outward appearance.