Operation Management Apple Design Process

Questions: 1.Critically examine and explain how the four design steps adopted by apple is the right way of product design. Support your answer with example wherever necessary? 2. Going by the case, do you think Apple by focusing on a narrow product line, is following a good design strategy. Explain your answer with examples? Answers: 1. The Apple is one of the famous and leading companies in the market because of having unique product and brand for the customers. It is understood that the products of the Apple are different from the competitors products. The company is famous in the field of the innovation and the innovation done by the company was not successful by adopting the design thinking. Design-thinking can be described as the solution oriented process is adopted by the companies to get the innovation by focusing on the consumers at the development stages. In the company Apple, the engineers applied the design process of the products by focusing on some areas of the business. The company focused on the customers and started to work on the design process such as focusing on the needs and desires of the customers, building understanding among the people to live the Apple products, focusing on the design rather than focusing on engineering work, and building simple but user-friendly products for the customer s. The success factor of the Apple depends upon constantly innovations. The company is never satisfied with its innovations and adopting new ideas for the innovation. It is not one day process. The company has to take many decisions before finalizing designs for the product. For the innovative product design process, Apple adopts four ways of techniques in the design process which are described below. Those four techniques adopted by the Apple were revealed during a panel discussion in the SWSW (South-by-Southwest) interactive conference (Interaction Design Foundation, 2017). The four ways are as follows: According to the panel, the detail mockups such as prototypes take very long time in the design and developing process but the long process prevents from the misunderstandings and the mistakes in the process. It is important to understand about the composition of the pixel perfect i.e. perfect padding, perfect margin, perfect font usage, perfect backgrounds and borders and consistent color usage. The long process is beneficial for both the company and the customers. After working several months, the designers created on final design. There were many designs selected by the company but after doing lots of research, designers selected one design. There are fewer companies who discard many designs to find out a perfect design. The meetings were held in every week between the designers and the engineers having free thinking of innovations. In the meetings, the designers developed critique ideas and the strategy to implement those ideas. The meetings encouraged the designers for creative thinking of design. The meetings were famous for developing the pie-in the-sky ideas. Along with this, the design teams conducted regular meetings to identify the loop in the design process. This reduced the disappointment in future. These ways helped the company and the customers in many ways. For example, company doesnt have need to explain to the customers about the products. The iphone7 is the example of perfect pixel mockup product. There are iphone, iPad and MacBook which are developed by Apple according to those four techniques and they are desired products among the customers (Jones, 2010). 2. In case of the product line, the Apple has adopted the strategy of narrow product line in its business. The company always focuses on hardware as well as consumers rather than focusing on the business as compared to its competitors. The product lines of the Apple are much easier to understand for the customers. This can be understood by an example. Example: As compared to its competitors, the Apple has simple and narrow product line. The comparison can be done between Apple and Microsoft. At the homepage of two companies the differences can be seen clearly. In the product list of the Microsoft, there are many products including those about which the customers have never heard of. On the other hand, at the homepage of Apple, the company has seven buttons including the products i.e. MacBook, iPod, iMac etc which are familiar and distinctive. The strategy of the Apple is simple and the company focused on simplicity i.e. get rid of the crappy stuff (Nosowitz, 2010). The narrow product line strategy is the good strategy adopted by the Apple. The Apples product line is narrow as compared to other companies. For instance, if any customer wants to buy and Apple laptop then he can choose MacBook Pro, MacBook air and only MacBook. There are three levels of the laptop and that it. It makes easier for the customers to differentiate between the available models. For example, in the other company like Sony, there are the laptops with the name Sony Vaio VGN-Z550N and Sony Vaio vGN-CS215J/R. on the other hand, Apple uses the words Air and Pro which helps the customers to get idea of machine and they select the product easily with each and every detail. With the narrow product line, the Apple has simplified approach to sell the products by re-energize the company. The narrow product line helped the company in the development of iMac, the iPod and the iPhone. These three products have helped the company to get success by breaking records in the market. The co mpany knows that the customers will get confused and frustrated due to too much choice. In the narrow product line, company is also able to provide best quality of technical support to the customers (Edible Apple, 2009). In terms of product offerings, it is clear that having narrow product line in the business, the company is able to attract more customers. The business approach of the Apple is like a basketball match in which either team uses lots of players or uses star players. So, Apple is successful by limiting the consumer choice. The narrow product line of the Apple is the key factor of the success of the company as the company has kept its product line narrow by helping consumers to understand what they are actually paying for. Because of its unique product line, the iPhone is very popular among the customers. Thus, it is clear that apples narrow product line is following a good design strategy. Reference Edible Apple, (2009), Why a simple product line is integral to Apples success, accessed on 7th March 2017 from https://www.edibleapple.com/2009/02/03/why-a-simple-product-line-is-integral-to-apples-success/ Nosowitz, D., (2010), Microsofts and Apples Product Lines Compared: This Is Why Apple Wins, accessed on 7th March 2017 from https://www.fastcompany.com/1652843/microsofts-and-apples-product-lines-compared-why-apple-wins Jones, B., (2010), Great Design Hurts: Striving for Pixel Perfection, accessed on 7th March 2017 from https://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/great-design-hurts-striving-for-pixel-perfection--webdesign-1016 Interaction Design Foundation, (2017), Apples Product Development Process Inside the Worlds Greatest Design Organization, accessed on 7th March 2017 from https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/apple-s-product-development-process-inside-the-world-s-greatest-design-organization