The Design of Desire, with Tony Fadell and Susan Kare

(upbeat music) Okay, good afternoon everyone, and thank you for being here, and welcome to the Design of Desire why products succeed or fail. I'm Alex Kessler, the Deputy Editor of ID Magazine, and today I have the pleasure and honor of moderating a conversation between two legends in tech and design, Tony Fidel and Susan Care. Please give it up. (audience applauding) I mean, neither of these guys need an intro, but I'm just gonna give you a little bit of context, I guess, for this conversation. Tony, the inventor of the iPod, actually side note, Tony, I understand that today's the 24th anniversary of the iPod, right? Absolutely, hi everybody. Yeah, Tony. Hi from Boston and MIT, hi everybody. Sorry to be there, but yes, today's the 24th anniversary of the launch of the iPod, I can't believe it's that long ago and I'm not old, but it is. I mean, congratulations, dude, that's huge. That's really-- - Thank you. - Okay, I'm gonna go back to my little intro, but basically, I'd love to just give you context. So Tony is the inventor of the iPod, but also a ledger board member, and he brought in Susan, designer of the OG Macintosh icons to enhance the new visual identity. - It's a wonderful human. (laughing) - I mean, absolutely. (audience applauding) But yes, so she was brought on by Tony to enhance the new visual identity of the ledger Nano Gen 5. And both of these guys have spent their illustrious careers, making technology useful, joyful, and human. Now, I'd love to start this off by-- I guess like, I'd love to know, how do you guys know each other? Like, obviously you've worked together, but how did this partnership begin and what made this ledger project so special? - Well, we met at General Magic shortly after the Earth cooled, and I remember that. (laughing) And we're viewing Tony fresh out of college to work at General Magic, and I got a lot of advice from him about design, even though he was in engineering. And we've been friends ever since. - Oh, I love. - And we've done multiple projects since, and it's wonderful to be able to work with Susan. And then also her son, (laughing) it's been multi-generational working together and being friends. - Yeah, two of us. - When I saw the Nano, when we were working on the Nano, I couldn't think of anyone more who had rather worked with Susan, especially as we're trying to expand the audience for signers and taking the ledger brand into many new spaces with new users. So Susan was absolutely the perfect thing, and luckily she said yes. (laughing) It was a risk. - You guys go way back. Now, Susan, your Mac icons made tech feel personal and human. How did you design for emotion as much as function? - Well, I guess on that Mac project, I was empathetic to users who didn't have necessarily embraced a command line interface, but I would say in general, you don't know what you don't know. I was in a software engineering group with unbelievable colleagues like Andy Hertzfeld and Bill Atkinson, and I had a lot of freedom. So I tried to make things meaningful. I mean, I think that's always important, so it isn't just a splat, a design splat, that maybe it's hard to remember its functionality. So I always try to do that, and really it was a lot about, let's solve this problem. How do you, what could I make so that if someone tells you what it is once, you don't forget? - And Tony, I've done a little research, and you've said in the past that the best design is invisible, that technology should disappear. How does that idea carry from iPod to the Nano Gen 5? - Well, I think the big thing to understand is that we are doing at ledger incredible privacy and security technology inside a very approachable interface and an approachable design. And so what we're trying to do is extract away as much as we possibly can, the technology of keeping you safe and secure so you can sign and authorize various transactions, but do it in a very friendly way, and trying to take it out of the hands of just the geeks. 'Cause before, and we've been moving the ledger product line and hardware and software line forward and usability, that this is the next step in that, and it was really to hide all of those intricacies of what Charles and the team have all been building over the last 10 years in something much a very friendly and approachable interface or product. - And Susan, you've always designed with approachability in mind. I'd love to know, when starting something new, how do you decide what should feel familiar versus entirely new? - Well, I think part of approachability has to do with familiarity and maybe choosing metaphors that are more human as a metaphor and literal, and something that smiles or adjusts your and always avoid a representation of tech because floppy for save, they age out so fast, but with a ledger job, obviously here's a very approachable little device that does something so important, but just the word crypto to people is still, can still be, I think, a little bit off-putting. I don't believe that will be the case over time, but in this case, I had the chance because the icons are right on the front of the case to just put a little welcome, a little hello image and that ideally, and I think obviously the idea is over time, there can be many more images, but where a person can, before they even touch the UI, they can have a sense of, this belongs to me, this reflects my personality just a little bit in the choice of familiarity. Yeah. And Tony, when designing for mass adoption, how do you balance engineering precision with emotional resonance? Yeah, I've learned so much over time that all great products are a, almost a 50/50 blend of rational functionality with emotional engagement and so that emotion is in the interface, the emotions in how it feels, the emotion is how it gives you feedback. And so you wanna make sure that some people have to say, okay, they really buy things based on the functionality, but other people, because it's approachable, they see it as an emotional product and they go, oh, tell me more about what it does for me from a technical point of view. So you have to make sure you understand that users, and it's not just gender specific, but users of all kinds come from either an emotional window or a rational window, and you need to bring both together to really have a product that allows multiple people and a much larger swath of people to engage and hopefully purchase and use the products longterm. So really it's that blend of emotion and rational that brings success, I believe, into consumer products. That balance. One of my favorite Tony Fidel quotes is, nobody cares about your product, people care about what your product can do for them. Yes. Coralary to what you were saying. But I think about that a lot. I have a question for both of you. From your illustrious careers, what's one design principle that stayed constant throughout your work? Yeah, both of you. Good luck, Susan. I mean, I would say I am always a flag waiver for simplicity whenever possible. There's an author, Scott McCloud, who wrote a book, "Understanding Comics," but it's really pretty applicable, totally recommend, came out in the '90s. And he has an illustration of maybe four pen sketches, and the first one looks a little like Prince Valiant, and then there's a little less detail and a little less. And it ends with just a circle with a smile and two dots. And he says that the lack of detail, or less detail, more universal, more that people can project themselves onto what you made. So I guess I think about that a lot. I don't think you need to draw a chrome pen using a million colors that you can see yourself in. I'm often inspired by chalk drawings on a sidewalk, or petroglyphs, or the kind of simple imagery that always seems new because it's distilled. Right. And yourself, Tony? For me is really first starting with paint. It feels like a superpower. So we're not just rationally solving the pain, but we're actually giving people superpowers. And that is what I love. I see whether it was the iPod, whether it was Niston, and now the Nano and Ledger product lineup. So just making sure that we bring superpowers to people to solve their pains. Amazing. Tony understands you have to leave. I've just been told. I want to say thank you so much for your time today, and for joining us. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. And Susan, I miss you, love you, and thanks everybody, Ledger. And I hope you enjoy the new Nano. And I hope to talk to you guys all soon. I'll be back in Paris very, very soon. All right. Please give it up for Tony. And now we'll continue our conversation with Susan. Woo. Susan, your designs are timeless. I mean, that's non-negotiable, right? But today's hits can feel like they're fleeting. What's the secret to endurance? Well, I think it's a little bit like, how do you make something that people will love forever? It's like saying, how do you paint a masterpiece? There's not really a formula. And I think you're going to trip yourself up if you're just, OK, this has to be fantastic. So I think it's partly just about a little like Tony said, solving a problem and approaching it open-minded. And I do always try, like I like a little tablespoon of humor in things, not hopefully not cloying, but you try to connect with something so elemental that it won't be like, "Ugh, that looks like yesterday." I don't want that anymore. That's the human aspect of it, right? We all love to connect with some humor. I mean, from Mac to Le Giornano, how do you keep empathy and simplicity across, like, generations of tech? Well, as I said before, I would say, don't actually, I mean, my mind always goes to making icons and logos. They don't picture any kind of technology because it won't look that way in five minutes. And I mean, I think it's like, no one stops at a stop sign and thinks, why am I thinking I'm going to redesign this? It's so old. Right. So I think it's nice if you can make something that sort of blends seamlessly into the landscape and looks like it's always been there as a goal. Of course. You know, if you could really say what to do to make something, then everything would be, would last forever. I guess I just part of it's making things you like yourself and hope that if you pour yourself and your thoughts and your research, I'm always taking pictures just of things that I see that I like that might be adaptable. And as an artist, I'd love to know, you know, beyond technology, what do you look to for inspiration? What inspires you? I would say in general, not technology. I wouldn't say I'm obsessed with looking at every incremental change. But I am kind of obsessed with looking at it like it's been so great to be in Paris and look at all the typefaces on the signage and the style of doors. And I actually really love the green walk signal because the figure looks really looks like it's in motion. And it has what look like one dot makes it look like it has shoes or boots. That's quite like bubbly, right? Which I think it has just a tiny bit of a cartoon feel. And yet it seems alive and I counted, there's only fewer than 40 dots. How long did it take you to count? But I thought those were filed those away. But inspiration to everywhere. I go to museums, I like old type books. As I said, I think on this street, there are tons of shops that have notions and bag charms. It's like, oh, there's something interesting there that people just want to spend money on something completely decorative that they don't need. What is that? You know, should I be thinking about doxons more? Right. And lastly, I'd love to know what's been a moment in your career that you're really proud of. I mean, obviously there are so many things that I could think of. But I'd love to know from yourself, like what's really moved you and excited you? Well, I would say I feel, my career makes me feel really grateful, really grateful that I could make a living and contribute to our household as an art field. And I also feel as if my career, I would never have imagined that I wanted to work. Like one of my first real jobs was at Apple, Fortune 500 manufacturing company. That wouldn't really have been something I would have thought was desirable. And yet I'm so grateful to have had the chance to work with thanks to Steve Jobs. I got to meet Paul Rand and Herzlfeld, Bill Atkinson. And that's been a great part of this job. I never knew Ariel Wengroff or Jules McLean. And yet I learned, created, and had fun with them. So that was Struth. Amazing. Thank you so much. It's the people more than the jobs. I mean, I'm honored to be sat here with you today, Susan. Thank you so much for your time. Please give it up for Susan.