Apple Designer Christopher Stringer Leads Off its Witnesses - Wall Street Journal (blog)

By Jessica E. Vascellaro

Apple called one of its veteran industrial designers for a walk down iPhone memory lane during the first day of its closely watched patent trial against Samsung Electronics.

Christopher Stringer, Apple’s first witness in the case, said he has worked on every hardware product the company has shipped since he joined in 1995 and is listed as an inventor on patents involved in the case. He is part of a team of around 15 designers that work in very close cooperation and report to Apple’s design guru Jonathan Ive.

There were flat iPhones, boxy iPhones and fatter iPads presented as Mr. Stringer, fashionably dressed in a white suit and sporting long hair, discussed how he and Apple’s notoriously secret squad of hardware designed arrived at their designs.

Apple lawyer Harold McElhinny, of the firm Morrison & Foerster LLP, shuffled back and forth between the witness standing handing Mr. Stringer devices as he asked him describe an array of iPhone sketches and prototypes dating back to at least 2006. One model was flatter and more brick-shaped than the current iPhone. The other resembled the iPhone, but said “iPod” on the back, which Mr. Stringer said may have been to conceal its identity or because Apple hadn’t come up with the iPhone name.

Mr. Stringer said the team wanted to build the most “beautiful” product and didn’t consider functional matters like making a phone better at making phone calls. They weren’t aiming to make a device that was cheaper or easier to build either, he said.

Apple’s lawyers are trying to prove that Apple’s iPhone and iPad innovations were unprecedented and risky as they try to prove that Samsung ripped off their designs.

Mr. Stringer detailed some of the challenges of building the iPhone, including positioning the glass cover and building the steel band around the phone without interfering with the antenna.

When asked if his team was nervous about how the iPhone would be received when it came out in 2007, he said that even Apple co-founder Steve Jobs had doubts because the product was so unprecedented.

Mr. Stringer’s testimony also provided a peak at the operations of Apple’s secretive industrial design team, which is responsible for the sleek, recognizable look of Apple devices.

He said the team often works around a table in a kitchen, translating ideas to sketches to computer designs to 3D models.

When asked to describe what industrial designers do, Mr. Stringer said they “imagine objects that don’t exist and guide the process that brings them to life.”

When asked how the design team settled on the final iPhone design, he said “It was the most beautiful of our designs… When we realized what we got, we knew.”

The day wrapped up after brief introductory testimony by Philip Schiller, an Apple senior vice president, who is expected to take the witness stand again when the trial reconvenes on Friday.