Apple can move back to the design-focused culture that shaped some of its most important products. New CEO John Ternus made design a much bigger part of his work, spending significant time with the company’s industrial design and human interface teams.
According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple also does not appear to be actively looking for an executive to oversee the entire design organization. Ternus now appears to fill that gap itself, giving the company’s hardware and software design groups a single senior decision-maker again after years of operating under separate leaders.
Design fits how Ternus Apple wants to run
Ternus spent much of his Apple career in hardware engineering, eventually overseeing development on products including the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and AirPods. His early moves as CEO suggest he wants to stay close to product development rather than leave it entirely to the teams under him. Bloomberg says Ternus will largely leave areas such as financial operations and supply chain management to other senior executives. His attention remains focused on engineering, product development and design.
While former CEO Tim Cook kept more distance from Apple’s design work, Ternus seems to be taking a much more hands-on approach. Bloomberg says that designers now see the new CEO in the studio regularly, sometimes more than once in the course of a day.
Apple is putting design closer to the top again
Jony Ive’s departure in 2019 left Apple’s industrial and software design groups without an executive over both teams. Molly Anderson currently leads industrial design, while Steve Lemay heads human interface design. Neither supervises both groups. Ternus had already started taking responsibility for Apple’s design organization before becoming CEO, according to Bloomberg.
Apple could change the arrangement later, and it’s far too early to know whether the Ternus approach will lead to better products. Nevertheless, I find the direction encouraging. Apple’s recent hardware has often leaned more toward refinement than bold design changes, so having a CEO who wants to spend so much time around engineering and design makes me more excited about where the company could go next.
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