dechezette

Typically Apple’s reputation for innovative design is associated with industrial designer Jonathan Ive. Oft overlooked however is the design of the Mac’s operating system. Cordell Ratzlaff led the team at Apple that developed the design and interaction model for OS X. He’s interviewed in the book Designing Interactions about this and his other exploits at Apple. You can view an excerpt of a video that’s included on a DVD here.

I saw Cordell Ratzlaff and some of his team speak on this at University of the Arts in Philadelphia a few years ago. Very interesting how they used 3D designers to help solve a basically 2D problem. I believe human scale is important in all design communications regardless if they are architecture or flat paper.

It also interesting to see how Apple has incorporated a more dimensional experience into the OS’s interaction as well. You can see traces of it in the transitions on the iPhone or when you enable fast switching between logged in users. Time Machine is another example. Windows has also pursued this on Vista with Flip 3D: http://tinyurl.com/2r3yta