News: Apple has announced that it’s shaking up its senior executive management team to better integrate hardware and software design, following claims that the company is “a little bit behind” in this area.
In addition to his role as senior vice president of industrial design, Jonathan Ive (above) will now head up a human interface department. Ive’s design team was named best design studio of the past 50 years by D&AD in September and Apple’s statement yesterday said “his incredible design aesthetic has been the driving force behind the look and feel of Apple’s products for more than a decade.”
His promotion follows Yves Behar saying in our interview at Dezeen Live last month that he has set up a user interface group at his San Francisco design studio Fuseproject to explore how to bring the disciplines of hardware and software design together. “Designing these two things as one at the same time is really a completely new, really fascinating exercise for me as a designer,” Behar told Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs. “The opportunities are there and the fact that we are not taking these opportunities as designers I think is lazy.”
In the same interview, Behar rejected the “skeuomorphic” approach adopted by companies including Apple, which has led to the grainy leather-effect Calendar with torn-off pages (below) and wood-effect bookshelf applications in its products, saying that “there’s now many companies looking at it in a way that’s quite interesting and Apple actually is a little bit behind in that area.”
Apple also announced the departure of senior vice president of iOS software Scott Forstall, who was said to be a proponent of the skeuomorphic approach within Apple. He’s to serve as adviser to CEO Tim Cook in the interim before leaving next year.
The news comes as part of a wider reshuffle of Apple’s management intended to “encourage even more collaboration between the company’s world-class hardware, software and services teams.”
Senior vice president of internet software and services Eddy Cue – whose team is already responsible for the iTunes Store, the App Store, the iBookstore and iCloud – will take on the additional responsibility of Siri and Maps. Senior vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi will lead development of both the iOS and OS X operating platforms, previously run by separate teams, and Bob Mansfield will lead a new department combining all the company’s teams working on wireless technologies.
See all our stories about Apple »
Top image: the iPad mini, launched last week
The post Jonathan Ive to lead both hardware
and software design at Apple appeared first on Dezeen.
Post a Comment