Apple
Sr. Product Designer / Design Manager Apple Dec 2013 – Mar 2017
I joined Apple on the iAd team, working on both the ad-creation and delivery side of things. When that team moved into iTunes, I shifted back to human interface work and joined the effort to build Apple Music out of iTunes and Beats.
iTunes was all third-party content, so when Apple News launched, our team was the obvious fit, since we were already the most comfortable designing around content we didn’t control. My team handled the app design and the content templates that publishers would use.
Somewhere in there I built a few internal web tools that connected me with the WWDC and Evangelism teams, which led to contributing to a WWDC and helping build out the Apple Human Interface Guidelines site and its supporting assets.
I grew my team to around fifteen designers, doing a mix of template design, content work, and human interface work, mostly centered on the Radio tab in Apple Music. I also filed a couple of patents around connecting brands to users. Both came straight out of problems I was wrestling with across iAd and Apple News.
The hardest part was honestly just the pace. The exec reviews were brutal and sixty-hour weeks were normal. But the foundation my team built for Music and News still ships to hundreds of millions of people today.
Tags
- Product Design Designing the actual product. Users get the final vote, not the portfolio.
- Human Interface Design Apple's term for doing the small things right. I learned the craft on the HIG team.
- Content Design The words and the structure. Usually the thing that's actually broken.
- Design Management Hiring well and protecting the work, mostly by absorbing the noise before it reaches the team.
- Patents A few filed around connecting brands to users. A byproduct of the iAd and News work.