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Transparent Ambition

(take.surf)
74 points goranmoomin | 1 comments | 21 Jun 25 23:32 UTC | HN request time: 0.207s | source
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pwg ◴[23 Jun 25 17:54 UTC] No.44358323[source]▶
> Apple's designers (and those of many other companies) come back to the idea of translucency giving order and imbuing personality. I cannot for the life of me understand where this idea comes from.

When the company employs designers on a permanent salaried basis, those designers must make changes in order to assure their continued employment. To do otherwise risks the bean counters in the accounting department asking the pointed question: "Why are we employing all these designers when they are not producing anything?". The result is that there must be change for the purpose of assuring the designers continued employment. Result: translucent designs no one wants, but that looked great in the powerpoint presentations used to assure the designers remained employed.

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1. conradev ◴[24 Jun 25 00:21 UTC] No.44361593[source]▶
Another framing of the same phenomenon:

If the company makes cellphones, the cellphones need to sell. In order for people to buy the cellphone, they first have to want it, and so the cellphone needs to be universally desirable. The company hires a design team on a permanent salaried basis to do exactly this. Accounting really needs the number of phones sold to keep going up every year, so they really need the designers to think of new things that people might desire to include in the phones each year.

This was first done with cars, and that is why car companies also hire design teams on a permanent salaried basis.