Learn how five of Apple’s fundamental design principles can give your medical product the charm and success of the iPod. The first in a multi-part series on Industrial Design processes and technique.

Industrial Design is fun for everyone. Whether we’re working on a tiny disposable surgical tool or a large biotech instrument, clients enjoy the creative rush of early concepting sessions and design reviews. We pass around sketches and models, look at , and talk enthusiastically about the products personality and feeling. Even the stiffest of suits gets passionate when color swatches go around the table.

In these meetings, designers and clients will often conjure the spirit of a well-known consumer product to communicate a complex design concept. For instance, after unveiling a foam model, feedback might include “the buttons should be more flush with the housing… like on the new Sony cameras.” Or maybe the preliminary color choices are “a good start, but a bit too Volkswagen’y.” While some designers may frown at such a conversation, we’ve found that drawing from the collective vocabulary of existing product designs makes for simple and effective communication. Thanks to Sony and Volkswagen, we know what to work on when we get back to our desks.

But we’ve noticed an alarming trend over the last five years. No matter the product at hand – be it a delivery device, console, or even gigantic free- standing lab automation tool – it’s become inevitable that someone, at some point in the design process, will reference Apple’s groundbreaking modernist music player, the iPod.

If I had a dollar for every time someone told me to make it look like an iPod, I could probably take the designers out to a nice dinner once in a while.

Why the iPod?

I don’t blame our clients for wanting product designs reminiscent of the iPod. Apple has sold more than 100 million units in just 6 six years. That’s an iPod for every 67 people on earth. It’s created an entire cottage industry that churns out thousands of new accessories annually. It’s inspired a building in Dubai, the iPad, which features a tower built at the same angle as an iPod in its docking station. Some international banks even use the price of iPods in different countries as an index to compare global currencies and purchasing power around the world. The iPod is, in terms of proliferation and influence, one of the most successful product designs in modern history.

Yet despite it’s overwhelming success, the iPod’s physical design can best be described as simple. It may have a beautiful, modernist housing, trendy color options and elegant presence, but Apples success with the iPod is surely due to their attention to emotion and groundbreaking efforts to simplify complex technology.

Five practical design lessons

Business guru Tom Peters says it best – “In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. Nothing could be further from the truth. Design is the fundamental soul of a man made contraption.” Apple gets this.

So here are five iPod inspired tips for injecting soul into your next medical device.