35 years of product design wisdom from Apple, Disney, Pinterest, and beyond | Bob Baxley
Bob Baxley, a design executive from Apple, Pinterest, and Yahoo, discusses the moral obligation to build great products, the strategic value of design, and counterintuitive lessons on team structure, like why design might report to engineering. He also shares insights on fostering creativity and using AI as a life coach.
Deep Dive Analysis
17 Topic Outline
Steve Jobs' Legacy and Apple's Enduring Culture
Challenges for Apple Alumni in New Cultures
Evaluating Company Culture and Design Value Before Joining
Defining Design as a Holistic Mindset
Strategic Value of Design for Organizational Efficiency
Ideal Team Size for Innovation: The Beatles Principle
Distinguishing Design from Product Management Roles
Argument for Design Reporting to Engineering
Integrating Engineers Early in the Design Process
The Maker Mindset in Product Development
Design Tenets vs. Design Principles for Decision Making
The Moral Obligation of Software Makers
Understanding Software as a Medium with Emotional Impact
Reducing Ambiguity for Efficient Design Processes
The 'Primal Mark' Concept and Delaying Visual Prototyping
AI as a Personal Life Coach for Self-Reflection
Lessons from the Apollo Program: Championing Radical Ideas
6 Key Concepts
Design as a Mindset
Design is not merely the visual expression of an idea or a specific function, but a holistic mindset focused on imagining a desired future and taking steps to make it real. It involves intentionality and accounts for a broader set of constraints than other problem-solving methodologies.
The Beatles Principle
This principle suggests that the best and most cohesive products often emerge from small, tight-knit teams, typically 4 to 6 people, rather than large groups. This fosters a collective genius (scenius) and allows for greater efficiency and a unified vision, especially when creating something new.
Design Tenets
Unlike broad 'design principles' (e.g., simple, clear, beautiful) which are hard to argue against but not useful for decision-making, design tenets are specific, opinionated, and context-dependent rules that guide choices. They help settle recurring debates and provide clarity for a team to operate efficiently within a defined groove.
Software as a Medium
Software should be understood as a creative medium, on par with film, music, or books, rather than just a tool. It has a profound emotional component, eliciting feelings of confusion or empowerment, and creators have a moral obligation to consciously design for the desired emotional response from users.
The Primal Mark
This concept, borrowed from art, refers to the first mark made on a canvas, which then dictates everything that follows. In design, drawing a picture or creating a high-fidelity prototype too early can prematurely narrow possibilities, as people tend to gravitate towards and double down on the first visually concrete idea, hindering exploration of better solutions.
Undermind (or Unconscious)
The 'undermind' is the part of the brain that processes information before it reaches language and conscious thought. It operates like 'compiled code' and can process patterns that the conscious mind, which works with 'interpreted code' (language), may not yet recognize, making it valuable for self-reflection when externalized.
9 Questions Answered
When moving from a powerful culture, it's crucial to recalibrate by holding onto the values of the previous organization (e.g., attention to detail, product excellence) but adapting behaviors to the new culture. Taking a gap between roles can help with this recalibration.
Look for a credible story from the CEO or founders about why they believe in design, tracing it back to the company's inception. Companies that truly value design often have it embedded in their root DNA from the beginning, rather than grafting it on later.
Emphasize that design fosters organizational alignment around philosophical goals, vision, and mission, ensuring all efforts ladder up to a cohesive whole. This clarity allows companies to operate with greater efficiency and smaller, more effective teams, leading to a strategic advantage.
Product managers should focus on understanding the customer and business realities, driving the roadmap, and providing clear creative briefs. Designers should then be given the time and space to solve those problems, respecting the boundaries of each role while embracing creative tension to arrive at better solutions together.
When design is considered 'phase zero' of the engineering process, it can lead to better integration, more technically feasible solutions, and greater enthusiasm from engineers who are brought into the process early. This structure can also improve accountability for timelines and costs.
Identify 'creative technologists' within engineering who are comfortable with ambiguity and can participate in early, philosophical discussions about conceptual models. Bringing a small, cross-functional group together at the inception phase helps everyone feel part of the process and fall in love with the direction.
Founders and product leaders should provide clear, specific creative briefs and a strong company vision. Design is a problem-solving methodology, and removing ambiguity upstream allows designers to operate more efficiently, focusing on solving the problem rather than spinning on undefined variables.
AI prototyping tools are likely fantastic as production tools once the idea is fully formed and robust. However, for early-stage conceptualization, it's best to delay drawing a picture or creating high-fidelity prototypes as long as possible to avoid prematurely narrowing possibilities and to allow for exploration of second, third, and fourth ideas.
The Apollo program, particularly the story of John Houbolt championing Lunar Orbit Rendezvous, teaches that radical ideas need champions willing to risk their careers for them. It also highlights that great ideas can persist and find their time, but they require passionate advocacy to succeed.
16 Actionable Insights
1. Build Products with Moral Obligation
Recognize that every software interaction impacts users’ emotional energy; strive to create products that empower rather than frustrate, as a moral obligation to improve quality of life and reduce user confusion.
2. Prioritize Vision for Design Efficiency
Provide designers with clear, specific context and a shared philosophical understanding of the product and company vision to enable faster, more focused design work and reduce ambiguity.
3. Implement Decision-Making Design Tenets
Create 3-4 memorable design tenets (not generic principles) that act as clear decision-making tools for the entire team, helping to settle recurring debates and guide consistent product direction.
4. Integrate Design & Engineering Early
Connect design and engineering teams tightly from the beginning, involving ‘creative technologists’ who can sit with ambiguity, to ensure technical feasibility, foster buy-in, and build shared ownership.
5. Delay Visual Prototyping
Resist drawing high-fidelity prototypes too early, as the ‘primal mark’ can prematurely narrow possibilities; instead, explore concepts conversationally and with low-fidelity ‘block frames’ to allow for deeper, more original ideas.
6. Recognize Software’s Emotional Impact
Understand that software is a medium with an emotional component; consciously design to elicit desired emotions from users, rather than just focusing on tasks, to create more impactful products.
7. Recalibrate When Changing Cultures
When moving from one strong company culture to another, take time to recalibrate; hold onto core values but adapt behaviors to the new environment, as new places often hire for values, not specific past behaviors.
8. Observe Users in the Wild
Actively seek opportunities to watch ‘mere mortals’ use any software (not just your own product) in their natural state to develop intuition about human-computer interaction and avoid psychological biases.
9. Champion Ideas, Not Yourself
Advocate passionately for ideas you believe in, viewing it as promoting the idea’s success in the world rather than self-promotion, and have the courage of your convictions to fight for it.
10. Embrace Design as Holistic Mindset
View design as a holistic mindset of imagining a desired future and taking steps to make it real, rather than just a visual expression or a function, to foster intentionality across the company.
11. Small Teams for New Initiatives
Keep teams small and tight when starting something new to foster clarity of vision and collective genius (‘seniors’), scaling up only once the direction is clear.
12. Respect Functional Boundaries
Understand and respect the roles and boundaries between different functions (e.g., product, design, engineering), trusting each team to excel in their specific domain to foster collaboration and efficiency.
13. Understand Your Function’s Value
When seeking a new role, assess how important your specific function (e.g., design, engineering) is to the company’s founders and leadership, as working where your contribution is valued is crucial for job satisfaction.
14. Develop a Broad Company Vision
Founders should develop a clear company vision that extends beyond the current product, providing a guiding principle for growth, acquisitions, and overall strategic direction.
15. Use AI as a Life Coach
Use AI tools like ChatGPT as a ’life coach’ by asking specific questions (e.g., about blind spots, outdated mindsets) or engaging in structured daily questioning to reflect on and clarify personal thoughts and patterns.
16. Career is Not Your Life
Remember that your career is not your entire life; setbacks or ‘failures’ in a job do not define your overall well-being or destroy your career trajectory.
8 Key Quotes
Design is trying to imagine the future you want to live in and then take the steps to make it real.
Bob Baxley
Saying a company is design-led does not mean it's designer-led.
Joff Redfern (as quoted by Bob Baxley)
Documentation is a failure state.
Bob Baxley
Every interaction should start simple and the user should have to opt into complexity.
Bob Baxley
The entire product should look and feel like it came from a single mind.
Bob Baxley
Each one of those interactions, it takes a little bit of energy away from you and it ups, it ramps your frustration just a little bit. And the bummer about software, both for the audience and for the creators is that it's an anonymous medium.
Bob Baxley
There's nothing worse than a brilliant image of a fuzzy concept.
Ansel Adams (as quoted by Bob Baxley)
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
African proverb (as quoted by Bob Baxley)
2 Protocols
Establishing Design Tenets for Product Development
Bob Baxley- Identify recurring debates or bifurcations within the team where different camps emerge.
- Hold a definitive discussion to settle these debates once and for all, choosing a clear direction (e.g., 'left instead of right').
- Formulate 3-4 concise, opinionated statements that capture these decisions, making them memorable and easy to internalize.
- Use these tenets as decision-making tools in future design debates, ensuring consistency and alignment with the company's core philosophy.
Design Process for Conceptual Clarity and Efficiency
Bob Baxley- Delay drawing any high-fidelity visuals or prototypes for as long as possible to avoid prematurely narrowing possibilities (the 'primal mark').
- Engage in conceptual and conversational discussions to explore second, third, and fourth ideas before committing to a visual representation.
- Utilize low-fidelity tools like 'block frame diagrams' (simplified wireframes) to discuss conceptual structure without getting sidetracked by visual details.
- Once conceptual clarity is achieved, leverage robust design systems or agencies to rapidly produce high-resolution comps, as the 'hard part' of thinking is already complete.