Make It New, Barry Katz
Make It New, Barry Katz
3 Rating(s)
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Make It New
The History of Silicon Valley Design

Author: Barry Katz

Narrator: Sean Pratt

Unabridged: 8 hr 27 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Ascent Audio

Published: 11/01/2015


Synopsis

California’s Silicon Valley is home to the greatest concentration of designers in the world: corporate design offices at flagship technology companies and volunteers at nonprofit NGOs; global design consultancies and boutique studios; research laboratories and academic design programs. Together they form the interconnected network that is Silicon Valley. Apple products are famously “Designed in California,” but, as Barry Katz shows in this first-ever, extensively illustrated history, the role of design in Silicon Valley began decades before Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak dreamed up Apple in a garage.
Offering a thoroughly original view of the subject, Katz tells how design helped transform Silicon Valley into the most powerful engine of innovation in the world. From Hewlett-Packard and Ampex in the 1950s to Google and Facebook today, design has provided the bridge between research and development, art and engineering, technical performance and human behavior. Katz traces the origins of all of the leading consultancies—including IDEO, frog, and Lunar—and shows the process by which some of the world’s most influential companies came to place design at the center of their business strategies. At the same time, universities, foundations, and even governments have learned to apply “design thinking” to their missions. Drawing on unprecedented access to a vast array of primary sources and interviews with nearly every influential design leader—including Douglas Engelbart, Steve Jobs, and Don Norman—Katz reveals design to be the missing link in Silicon Valley’s ecosystem of innovation.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Nelson on December 01, 2022

I don't know how I missed "Make It New: A History of Silicon Valley Design", a book from 2015, but it is one of the greatest gems about the history of Silicon Valley, about the birth of multimedia technologies, but in particular about how design, not development, became the center of technological c......more

Goodreads review by John on January 06, 2016

Useful history but dry Lots of great nuggets in here, and reminders of how many pioneers we owe a debt of gratitude. But a little mixed up organizationally, leaves a lot out, and is a little too much like a laundry list of people and accomplishments. But important history to know; I'm glad someone s......more

Goodreads review by Jorge on July 07, 2020

Great records about the strategic role of industrial designers in silicon valley.......more

Goodreads review by Tech on January 27, 2018

The good news: Stories about Silicon Valley technology and/or the entrepreneurs seem to appear daily. But books on Silicon Valley design, the "how" consumers interact with products - has never had its own history - until now. Katz traces the history of design from "make the sheet metal look the same a......more

Goodreads review by Paricha on September 08, 2019

A comprehensive, extremely well-researched history of Silicon Valley and what we come to know as design today. I appreciate the documentary-ready narrative, one sprinkled with self-deprecating sarcasm and double-edged Valley-speak. He somehow makes a boring “origin story of tech” a fascinating and e......more