35 years of product design wisdom from Apple, Disney, Pinterest and beyond | Bob Baxley

Key Concepts:

• Design as clear thinking made visible
• Design tenets vs. design principles
• Software as a medium with emotional impact
• Importance of vision and clarity in product development
• The "primal mark" and delaying visual design
• Lunar Orbit Rendezvous as a product development analogy
• The undermind and AI as a life coach
• The importance of team cohesion and shared goals

Summary:

1. Introduction and Bob Baxley's Background

• Bob Baxley is a designer, executive, and advisor with experience at Apple, Pinterest, Yahoo, and ThoughtSpot.
• He has played a key role in the design of the Apple online store, the Apple App Store, Pinterest, and Yahoo Answers.
• The conversation covers topics ranging from design reporting to engineering, the moral obligation to build great products, delaying prototyping, and lessons from the Moon Landing.

2. Apple's Culture and Alumni Success

• Steve Jobs considered Apple itself one of his greatest creations, emphasizing the lasting impact of the company's culture.
• Apple's culture is characterized by a constant pursuit of improvement in every aspect of the company, from the checkout system to the cafeteria. Example: Apple patented the pizza box.
• Baxley suggests that the strong culture at Apple can make it difficult for alumni to succeed elsewhere, as they need time to recalibrate and adapt to new environments.
• He highlights Hiroki Asai's success at Airbnb as an exception, noting the multi-year gap between his departure from Apple and joining Airbnb.
• Key takeaway: New places hire you for the values of your previous organization, but not the behaviors.

3. Pinterest Experience and Cultural Fit

• Baxley describes his time at Pinterest as unsuccessful, attributing it to a clash with the company's culture.
• He came in behaving as he did at Apple (very direct, fighting hard), which was not well-received at Pinterest.
• Pinterest had posters encouraging people to "say the hard thing," indicating a different cultural norm than Apple.
• He emphasizes the challenges of executive roles, including personal and family pressures, and the high stakes involved.
• He believes a startup's job is to grow the founder, and that executives can be outgrown by their roles.
• A startup is still a startup until the founder moves aside.
• Tactical advice: When looking at new companies, assess whether they genuinely value design.

4. Defining Design and Its Strategic Value

• Baxley defines design as "clear thinking made visible," drawing from Edward Tufte.
• He views design as a holistic mindset, imagining the desired future and taking steps to make it real.
• Design is different from science (observational) and engineering (step-by-step), as it considers a broader set of constraints.
• He argues that design is about organizational alignment around philosophical goals, vision, and mission.
• Design creates a cohesive and integrated whole, leading to greater efficiency and strategic advantage.
• Example: The Apple online store team had only six designers for a global operation, due to clarity of vision.
• Smaller teams foster "scenius," a collective genius that's hard to achieve with larger groups (The Beatles analogy).

5. Design Leadership and Reporting Structure

• "Saying a company is design-led does not mean it's designer-led" (Joseph O'Sullivan). Design is a mindset, not just a role.
• Product managers should drive the roadmap, while designers focus on solutions within those parameters.
• Baxley advocates for respecting boundaries between different groups and embracing creative tension.
• He suggests that design should report to engineering, considering it "phase zero" of the engineering process.
• This structure ensures engineering is involved early, leading to better technical feasibility and enthusiasm.
• He acknowledges that design metrics are difficult to define and measure reliably.
• At Apple, design always reported to engineering under Steve Jobs.
• Tactical advice: Integrate engineers early in the design process by identifying "creative technologists" who can handle ambiguity.

6. The Moral Obligation to Build Great Products

• Baxley argues that building great products is a moral obligation, as people interact with software hundreds of times a day.
• Poorly designed software causes frustration and takes away from people's quality of life.
• He emphasizes the anonymity of software creation, making it easy to lose sight of the impact on users.
• Product people have an obligation to put emotional energy back into people's lives.
• He encourages observing people using software in the wild to develop intuition and empathy.
• Example: Observe people using self-checkout systems or struggling with chip card inserts.

7. Software as a Medium

• Baxley views software as a medium on par with movies, music, and books, capable of eliciting strong emotions.
• He emphasizes the importance of being conscious of the emotional response a product evokes in users.
• Visual design plays a crucial role in evoking the desired emotion.
• He encourages thinking about the real people on the other side of the screen and their experiences.
• Example: Consider the grandmother using a restaurant's point-of-sale system and design it to make her feel confident.

8. Design Tenets vs. Design Principles

• Baxley advocates for design tenets over design principles, as tenets are decision-making tools.
• Design principles (e.g., simple, clear, beautiful) are often too general to be useful in making concrete decisions.
• Tenets are specific and opinionated, guiding choices in a particular direction.
• Example: Apple's Keynote tenets included "difficult to make ugly presentations" and "optimize for innovation over PowerPoint compatibility."
• ThoughtSpot's tenets: "Documentation is a failure state," "start simple, let users opt into complexity," and "the entire product should look and feel like it came from a single mind."
• Tenets should be memorable (no more than 3-4) and internalized by the team.

9. Containing the Design Process

• Design doesn't necessarily take more time. A good design will exist whether you plan for it or not.
• The key to containing the design process is to provide a clear and specific creative brief.
• Founders need to have a clear vision for the company, beyond just the product itself.
• Examples of strong vision statements: Google ("organize all the world's information"), Amazon ("Earth's most customer-centric company"), Disneyland ("the happiest place on earth").
• Designers need constraints, not a completely open-ended problem.

10. Delaying Visual Design and the "Primal Mark"

• Baxley advises waiting as long as possible to draw a picture or create a prototype.
• He introduces the concept of the "primal mark," the first mark on the canvas that sets the baseline for everything else.
• Drawing too early can lead to premature convergence on a particular idea, limiting exploration of alternatives.
• He cautions against product managers creating fully baked sketches for designers.
• Instead, focus on defining the problem and allowing designers to solve it creatively.
• He discourages the use of AI prototyping tools too early in the process, as they can stifle creativity and lead to generic solutions.
• At ThoughtSpot, they used "block brain diagrams" (low-fidelity wireframes) to focus on conceptual design before visual details.

11. AI Corner: AI as a Life Coach

• Baxley has been using AI (ChatGPT) as a life coach, asking it questions about his blind spots, strengths, and weaknesses.
• He found it useful for reflecting back patterns and thoughts that were already present in his "undermind" (unconscious).
• He emphasizes that AI is not a substitute for a therapist or real coach, but can be a valuable tool for self-reflection.

12. The John Hobolt Story and Lessons from the Apollo Program

• John Hobolt championed Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (LOR) for the Apollo program, risking his career to advocate for the idea.
• The story illustrates the power of great ideas, the need for champions, and the importance of courage in one's convictions.
• Takeaways: Say the hard thing, be patient with radical ideas, and passionately argue for what you believe in.
• Advocate for ideas, not for yourself.

13. Lightning Round

• Recommended books: The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Time in the Art of Living by Robert Gruden.
• Favorite recent movie/TV show: Severance, Lawrence of Arabia.
• Favorite product: Leica M6 film camera, Habitica (habit tracker/task management app).
• Life motto: "Design is clear thinking made visible" (Edward Tufte), "There's nothing worse than a brilliant image of a fuzzy concept" (Ansel Adams), "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together" (African proverb).
• If running the Warriors: Address the team's dependence on Steph Curry.

14. Conclusion

• Baxley encourages listeners to take responsibility for creating a better digital world and to prioritize the needs and emotions of users.
• He emphasizes the importance of clear thinking, collaboration, and a commitment to building products that make a positive impact.