Pretenders don't quite understand that design is born of constraints. Real-life constraints, be they tangible or cognitive: Battery-life impacts every other aspect of the iPhone design - hardware and software alike. Screen resolution affects font, icon and UI design. The thickness of a fingertip limits direct, gestural manipulation of on-screen objects. Lack of a physical keyboard and WIMP controls create an unfamiliar mental map of the device. The iPhone design is a bet that solutions to constraints like these can be seamlessly molded into a unified product that will sell. Not a concept. Not a vision. A product that sells. It turns out that when capable designers are given real constraints for real products they can end up creating great results. In Apple's case, groundbreaking products like the iMac, the iPod and the iPhone. Constraints have a wonderful way of focusing the mind on the fundamentals, whereas concept products can often have the opposite affect. Concept products are like essays, musings in 3D. They are incomplete promises. Shipping products, by contrast, are brutally honest deliveries. You get what's delivered. They live and die by their own design constraints. To the extent they are successful, they do advance the art and science of design and manufacturing by exposing the balance between fantasy and capability.So, what do you think? Should companies release concept designs or simply wait to launch the products?
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Apple has no need for additional hype, its product announcements are so incredibly monumental that pre-announcing would just be take some of the excitement away from the real thing.
Totally disagree with the original post, but I will comment on that site about that.
Further more if Apple did highlight an experience gap in the market, they would be crazy to release a public conceptual product around that experience gap. Makes no business sense, but that doesn't mean that in there own design process they are not building concept products, they probably are but like someone else has posted they don't show anyone.
What business have they in pushing the boundaries of design? They know they can follow in the footsteps of other companies that have done the hard work in design-led research. Let them test the water and then we will just add our apple factor to it when we think everyone is ready.
I'm sure they understand that transformation isn't about new products it's about new ways of using them.
So I'm not sure I agree with the post entirely. There is little mystique around apple's not creating concepts. They just go about design differently as per their MO. It's not purely because they are so much more amazing at design than everybody else that they don't see the point. That's absurd.
It's not better it's just different and it's more about business than design in my opinion.
I seriously doubt that Apple "skips" the conceptual design stage. I'm sure it is still a very big part of their process as is evidenced by the great products they release into the market. They just don't let you see it so that you, and bloggers, and tech critics can pick it apart and speculate about it before it's even had a chance to develop into a finished working product.
I don't think a design office that works with different clients can necessarily work this way. Showing a client a solid concept and getting them onboard with an idea and direction is critical to a product's overall success. That does not mean, however, that a concept should ever released for public scrutiny especially since they can so easily be distributed via the internet to a wide assortment of people who don't necessarily know what a concept is for and misconception about a product can spin wildly out of control.
I DO however, think it would be neat if Apple would give those of us who are interested a glimpse of their concepts AFTER the finished product has been released. I would love to see the initial concepts for the iPod and early mock-ups.
Figuratively and often literally. High concept design is like masturbation. Its fun but it doesn't lead to much!
As an "Mac guy" (and stock holder) it is nice to know they don't spend time and money in conceptual designs but I can't help but think where they'd be as a company if they did.
Concepts are just fake and out of the future scenario, like on paleo future - http://www.paleofuture.com/
It works for entreprises who whant to creat de future and own the thing, but it's a lie, when the future comes the concept from the past is just past.
I don't think it's working nowadays, the society, people, concepts and tec changes so fast that this kind of thinking just don fit anymore.
or not...