UX Design at Apple
UX Design | WorldWide Engineering for Mac
Apple’s WorldWide Engineering team has been collaborating across 3 countries for more than two years. Each day Engineering managers collect large sets of data for Mac desktops from Europe, Asia, and North America. Apple’s engineering management would hold a meeting each day (M-F) to share key data and information with one another. They would send information via phone and email and oftentimes spend up to 4 hours trying to communicate with one another, the insight that they have gathered. Apple’s engineering management faced inefficiencies on an ongoing basis due to a lack of software to centralize flow and collaboration across the various countries.
In June of 2013, I was brought on to lead their UX Design efforts, to design an enterprise software solution to help create virtual collaboration across their global engineering management.
Apple’s WorldWide Engineering team has been collaborating across 3 countries for more than two years. Each day Engineering managers collect large sets of data for Mac desktops from Europe, Asia, and North America. Apple’s engineering management would hold a meeting each day (M-F) to share key data and information with one another. They would send information via phone and email and oftentimes spend up to 4 hours trying to communicate with one another, the insight that they have gathered. Apple’s engineering management faced inefficiencies on an ongoing basis due to a lack of software to centralize flow and collaboration across the various countries.
In June of 2013, I was brought on to lead their UX Design efforts, to design an enterprise software solution to help create virtual collaboration across their global engineering management.
Background Story
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Apple had been experiencing this problem with data collaboration, and they decided that they’d come to Purdue’s campus to recruit talent. They came to the school of engineering to look for new faces to join Apple and help engineer software for the pain points listed above. Apple came to recruit for engineers. I was a UX Designer under Purdue’s Technology arm, and so naturally I “hacked” into the event to introduce myself, background, and thirst for designing beautiful software for people.
It was the summer of 2013 and I was in my Master’s program at Purdue University, under the arm of “Technology Leadership & Innovation,” and after attending the “engineers only” event, I was handed a quick smile with the message of “thanks, but we’re here for engineers… we’ll pass along your resume.” As it turns out, one week later, I received a phone call from a strange California phone number. It was Apple’s recruiter telling me that one of the managers saw my resume and that they needed a UXer, stat, to help with the build of Apple’s new enterprise data collaboration tool. Days later and after a few long interviews, I was brought on board to be the lead UXer as a Master’s grad for Apple’s WorldWide ops Engineering team. This is the story of how the team went from redundant ~4 hour daily phone calls to an online software platform for data collaboration. |
UX Research
To design a customized system that allows for WorldWide virtual collaboration, specific to Apple WorldWide engineering processes we needed to gather initial vision board from the primary user group, engineering stakeholders. When my partner and I conducted user research, we learned more about our user pain-points, needs, desires and preferences and were able to assess how well were we meeting the needs by ascertaining perceptions of our prototypes to determine the usability.
We needed to understand core reasoning for why the project has been initiated in the first place was of key importance, so we did NOT ad hoc implement the infinite number of feature wish-list items (otherwise the product would have been far too complicated and noisy). It’s important to keep the UX seamless and simplified, getting at the primary goals of the product.
Here, we had to identify the OKRs, or Objectives and Key Results
We needed to understand core reasoning for why the project has been initiated in the first place was of key importance, so we did NOT ad hoc implement the infinite number of feature wish-list items (otherwise the product would have been far too complicated and noisy). It’s important to keep the UX seamless and simplified, getting at the primary goals of the product.
Here, we had to identify the OKRs, or Objectives and Key Results
- OKRs, otherwise be known as KPIs or SMART Goals
- OKRs are a formal metric system put in place to benchmark progress throughout the project period
User Personas
To identify the key end-user characteristics, we found that there were two groups.
For better understanding of users groups within the WorldWide Engineering team, I created various groups of personas based on the stakeholder parties involved. These personas helped guide the design and development process, so that when making decisions, we'd continue to revisit "the end user," and ensure that we're making decisions based off of their best interest.
My main goal was to keep focus on the user task flows. Fortunately, in addition to the personas, we were able to have direct contact with the user groups so it was more applied than theory-based. This helped us to understand Apple's current process and how the team's information flows, what their needs are, and how to best design for them.
User flows were created to lay down the basic for what a user can do. We focused on two main users:
For better understanding of users groups within the WorldWide Engineering team, I created various groups of personas based on the stakeholder parties involved. These personas helped guide the design and development process, so that when making decisions, we'd continue to revisit "the end user," and ensure that we're making decisions based off of their best interest.
My main goal was to keep focus on the user task flows. Fortunately, in addition to the personas, we were able to have direct contact with the user groups so it was more applied than theory-based. This helped us to understand Apple's current process and how the team's information flows, what their needs are, and how to best design for them.
User flows were created to lay down the basic for what a user can do. We focused on two main users:
- Primary user group: Apple engineering managers from
- Europe (X)
- Asia (Y)
- North America (Z)
- Secondary user group: Apple operational engineers, i.e. those who report to the primary
Designing for Effeciency
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For the analysis its important to understand the current situation, what are the primary use-cases and functions; we found that the current processes take up to 4 hours
Problem
Design Solution
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Results
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This web app took a total of 520+ hours from design research, to stakeholder analysis, low fidelity illustrations, re-iterations, demos/presentations, and high fidelity designs. In total there have been more than 150+ recorded meetings and conversations to achieve the pixel perfect design that not only looks great but serves a meaningful purpose to Apple's Engineering management team. Note: The final designs are under NDA and unfortunately cannot be published without Apple's approval.
✓ 520+ hours from end to end ✓ 3 Countries for launch ✓ 10+ Engineering Managers ✓ 200+ high fidelity interface components ✓ User Research, Product Design strategy ✓ Requirements Gathering ✓ Design Psychology, layout elements ✓ Adobe Illustrator, Adobe photoship, Keynote ✓ #2 Pencil ✓ 42 cups of coffee |