KEN KOCIENDA
Head of Product Engineering at Humane
Former designer & engineer for Apple
•Author of the bestseller Creative Selection: Inside Apple’s Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs
With over fifty patents for the innovative work he did at Apple and part of the original teams that built the Safari web browser, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, Ken — now Head of Product Engineering at Humane – is ready to share his lessons with your organization.
Ken Kocienda is a Product Architect for Humane and was previously a software engineer and designer at Apple for over fifteen years. After graduating from Yale with a bachelor’s degree in history, he fixed motorcycles, worked in the editorial library of a major New York newspaper, taught English in Japan, and made fine art photographs. Eventually, he discovered the internet, taught himself computer programming, and made his way through a succession of dot-com-era startups, before landing at Apple in 2001, where he worked on the software teams that created the original versions of the Safari web browser, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Ken holds over fifty patents for the innovative work he did at Apple, including several covering the development of touchscreen keyboard autocorrection for the first iPhone, work that led to his promotion to Principal Engineer of iPhone software. After leaving Apple in 2017, he wrote the Wall Street Journal bestselling book, Creative Selection: Inside Apple’s Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs.
Follow him on Twitter @kocienda
Speech topics
Rethink Different
“Excellence” can sum up Ken’s long (15 years) career at Apple. This inspiring presentation introduces his “Seven Essential Elements” for doing great work: inspiration, collaboration, craft, diligence, decisiveness, taste, and empathy. Ken shares how to combine these elements to form “molecules” that help us achieve better, and more meaningful results, on a daily basis.
The iPhone: Innovation Lessons From The World’s First Trillion Dollar Company
As one of only twenty-five inventors listed by Apple on the “iPhone Patent”, Ken gives a first-person view into the secretive world of Apple, shares stories about the struggles and successes that went into the developing the touchscreen computing system we now take for granted, and gives insight into why Apple products like the iPhone turn out as well as they do. “iPhone Stories” is a from-the-trenches view of how innovation happens, and can serve as inspiration to individuals, groups, and companies who seek to do great work of their own.
Designing Your Future: Lessons from Apple’s Product Development Process
Drawing from his fifteen years of experience building great products at Apple and the Wall Street Journal bestselling book Creative Selection: Inside Apple’s Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs, Ken describes concepts like the “Seven Essential Elements” of creative and technical work, and the “Design Is How It Works” philosophy that drove Apple's product development. Through stories and examples taken from inside the product development labs and design studios at Apple, Ken shows how people, teams, and businesses can apply the lessons he learned working at one of the world’s most innovative companies
Books
Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs
Hundreds of millions of people use Apple products every day; several thousand work on Apple's campus in Cupertino, California; but only a handful sit at the drawing board.