Influence of the Olds: Ivy Ross X Mimi McMillan
Google Hardware’s Head of Design on the Intersection of Art and Tech. An Interview.
Ask any creatively minded Gen Z (which is most of them), and they will tell you that there is a war being waged on the arts throughout education (high school and beyond) to the detriment of all young peo- ple, irrespective of their chosen discipline. And those creative girl/gnc Gen Zs who are curious about the STEM fields do not see a space where they can merge their two inter- ests. However, rather than giving up and heading back to the art studio, in true Gen Z fashion, they are finding ways outside of traditional education to pursue both art and STEM — refusing to manipulate themselves in order to fit someone else’s idea of what a STEM girl looks like or does. We believe that Gen Zs will forge new paths and cre- ate new disciplines that sit at the intersec- tion of art and STEM, driving innovation on their terms. 19-year-old Mimi McMillan, an accomplished artist who is feeling her way through science and poised to merge her right and left brain for great things, sat down with one of the few women who embody tech and art with the same equilib- rium of a Gen Z — Google’s Head of Hard- ware Design, Ivy Ross — to talk about the future of STEM when the arts finally have a serious seat at the table.
Mimi McMillan: I’m 20, I live in the Bay Area, and I consider myself mainly an artist but have recently become more and more interested in pursuing the sciences or incorporating them some way into my art. I’m currently taking math and physics so I’m better able to do that. And as I’m going through this transition, I’m realizing how few people there are to set precedents and be role models for young people who don’t have a super-traditional background and want to work in STEM fields. So I’m really excited to hear your perspective since you have such a strong artistic background and are able to blend your skills so seamlessly.
Could you tell me more about your role at Google, and what types of projects you work on?
Ivy Ross: Sure. I’m currently VP of Design, Hardware at Google, so my team and I are responsible for creating all of the hardware products such as the Pixel phone, the Pixel book, any of the Google Home products, AR, and VR, so we work cross-functionally; my team does the industrial design, the packaging design, user experience for some of the categories, and customer experience in Search.
MM: That sounds fun! When did you realize working in tech was a possibility, or did you ever not see it as a possibility?
IR: I started as a jewelry designer, but I was always interested in materials and I was always very ahead of my time, or so people would tell me. Even in the fashion world, you have to study trends. I was an art major and a psych minor in school so I’m always interested in where society is headed, and where people are going. Essentially, some people think fashion is frivolous, but it’s not. Certain colors come and go based on the emotions of society, so even before I got into technology, I was both interested in and good at tapping into where things were moving. I always loved science and math. Art was my best subject, and math was my second-best subject. They’re actually very related; they say architecture is frozen music. [I believe] there is a rhythm that informs everything, a math that informs physical form, so when you really start engaging and creating physical shapes and structures, you start to understand the math and science behind it.
Back to your question, I think always being tapped into and being intuitive about where things were going, it was clear that in the future, a lot of these areas were going to meld and technology was going to become fashionable. I started feeling that ten years ago, that it was going to change our lives. I’ve always embraced the tension of opposites, so I think this idea of technology vs. handcrafted — everything we’re going through as a society now — makes a lot of sense. I was brought into Google Glass because I had designed eyewear for about eight years, and that’s how I entered into Google.
MM: That’s a really good point about trend prediction and analysis. Have you always been comfortable in the tech and business worlds? If not, were there any people or experiences that helped you gain confidence?
IR: I was always comfortable in the business world. My dad [had] his own business, so as a kid, I would go down to the office on the weekends. I would watch how he treated his team, how he created his strategies…so that piece was really in my DNA. At one point in my career I went to the Harvard Professional Development program, which is like getting your MBA in six months. The piece I love about business is it helps you realize your vision. I originally started as a commercial designer after being a little bit of an artist, and while an artist puts a piece of their soul on a pedestal and hopes it resonates with people, a designer actually solves problems. I think design is about solving problems, so I love the business end of having a vision and then using that vision to solve problems, or identifying consumer need and creating a design to solve it. As far as technology, even when I worked at Mattel toys, we created the first baby doll that had over 100 sensors in it, so I was always engaged in using technology to bring ideas to life. Clearly Google is the most-technology heavy company, but I think having come in through GoogleX to work on Glass, I got very quick education about the tech world. It’s actually a great time to be at Google because I’m clearly not a software engineer, but now that Google is going into hardware and really needs to think about the entire customer experience, it’s a good fit.
Whenever I consider taking a new role, I consider: are they going to use me for what I do best, and am I going to learn something new? If I’m not learning something new, I’m not interested. I feel like at Google I’m bringing experience they can use, and I’m also learning a tremendous amount at the same time, so it’s perfect in that way.
MM: How have you seen the people around you respond to your artist’s perspective, or how have you seen people’s perceptions about the importance of art change in the tech space?
IR: I have a very talented, diverse team, and we’re in the process of building Google’s design department. Design was a new muscle for Google to exercise and it’s been great to be there. Google designed some products previous to my creating this department, but certainly this year my task with the team was to create a full product portfolio in design language. Internally, everyone was shocked that we went through 144 different experiments with different shades to find the perfect color grey. I think some of that was a surprise, just because [design is] not a discipline they’ve had in-house for a long time. We have a color materials department now, so seeing the way in design, there’s a process that one goes through to determine the perfect color.
[This process] creates mutual respect for the skill set or discipline of what it takes to do a beautiful design, that meets the criteria no different from my respect for what it takes to code something or the mechanical engineering skills that many Google engineers have.
MM: How has being around those influences impacted your approach to art and design?
IR: Nowadays, you don’t design hardware as a container and then stuff it with software. We develop both together in terms of: what are the functions, what are the use cases, and how do the hardware and software bring the product to life? Hardware and software are constantly influencing each other, but we’re also influenced by user experience, the testing we do.
MM: How has your experience as a jewelry designer informed the way you design hardware?
IR: At heart, I’m a builder of things, of brands, of teams — that’s the common thread. Once you’ve welded or soldered with your own hands, you have an understanding of that mind-hand connection that teaches you about possibilities I don’t think one would get if they’d never made things before, so I’m grateful for my career as a craftsman and a maker because it gave me the confidence to see how one can translate an idea and manifest it with their hands or work through mechanical problems. Jewelry requires a lot of attention to tiny details and I think that translates to work I’m doing today with the team because it’s [all] about the details in hardware. I see a direct relationship between when I was making things with my hands to how I look at electronic products today.
MM: As a young person involved in the arts, I’ve noticed that my friends and I sort of create digital versions of ourselves through social media. I see it almost as a performance art project. Do you notice how technology changes how we create and view our sense of self?
IR: Oh, for sure. I think everything is getting much more multidimensional, and I find it refreshing. The best art often is experiential and you’re considering different planes, and playing with that. So I think everything as we get into the AR and VR world, there will be even more of that experimentation going on. I think technology makes us more creative if you know how to use it. I just saw this show by Yayoi Kusama at the Broad museum in Los Angeles where she has these infinity room spaces where you step into them — they’re using mirrors and LED lights — and you feel like you’re floating in space. You see multiples of yourself. It’s really quite an experience. I think what’s happening in the exploration of art using new technology is fascinating. Art always played this role in society of showing us where we are headed. It has clues in it (I believe), so artists should be ahead of their time. For a while, art was getting a bit boring, and, you could say, so were we as a society. Now, there are all of these exciting tools [encouraging] experimentation that I think is playful and creative.
MM: Definitely! I’m thinking about some virtual reality projects I’ve either read about or seen. It’s like a new field of art, which we haven’t had in so long. It’s really cool to be around during this era.
IR: I am grateful to have been born when I was because I’ve seen this progression. (And I plan on being alive for many, many more years.) I think it’s been perfect because I’ve seen this transition, and [Mimi], you’re growing up in a time where your set of tools is entirely different from the set of tools I had, so it will be very exciting to see what your generation produces. There are people who used to be animators in the film industry who are now playing in the VR and digital worlds, so to see this cross-pollination of talent has also been exciting.
MM: You mentioned earlier about technology helping people be more creative. How can we encourage people to use technology more creatively?
IR: Giving people phones that have cameras with filters and lighting and illustration options means giving everyone the opportunity to be more creative with the images they take. That’s the simplest version. For artists to create in VR where you can feel like you’re stepping into their works, that’s a whole new opportunity [that hasn’t fully been explored yet].
MM: It’s also interesting to think about having more artists creating these products and working in the tech field, and they’re almost creating more artists in the process. If we get more people artistic people working in tech, hypothetically, those artists will help create products to help people be more creative.
IR: Yes! You have people who are creating sculptures with 3D printing, who want to create shape and form from patterns or algorithms, and work better in CAD. They print a beautiful form in a variety of materials, whereas in the past, you would have had to be proficient at sculpting in clay or metal, so that’s an example of how a different kind of person can become an artist because of software design tools [developed for the purpose of being creative].
MM: Where do you see opportunities for artists in STEM?
IR: A lot of technology takes a long time to develop, so [I see] artists creating visions or images of what the future may hold, and working alongside technicians to manifest technology that can achieve those visions. That’s one way. The other is to use [available] technology or create apps or applications that use new technology and make it available to the public.
MM: Let’s talk about the term “STEM,” and our current way of categorizing disciplines. Do you see terms like STEM and STEAM being used much longer? How do you see our conception of different quote-unquote “fields” evolving?
IR: When I think of the arts, I think of all of the arts, including writing, so as we get into more the virtual world and artificial intelligence, there’s going to be more need for character development. I do see the barriers coming down because I believe in the tension of different perspectives together. It’s not science or art, it’s both, just like it’s not hardware or software, it’s both. They need to be in dialogue with each other and I think that right now they’re starting to work together more and then I think over time we’ll have have less boundaries and more fluidity between those different disciplines. It’s the early days [of fusion], but the days of technology for technology’s sake are gone. Nowadays, the technology has to be a creative tool or a tool that makes your life better. Having people with some background in design and art stepping into the technology world is the first step [towards that fusion].
MM: I find it disappointing when I tell people I’m debating continuing to pursue physics and they’re like, “You should drop that. Why are you even considering tech? You should just be an artist.” A lot of my art friends think math is pointless.
IR: No, I totally agree with you. Physics and art are an amazing combination. My daughter is 32, but I would tell her when she was younger, “don’t worry, there will be new ways to apply these skills, there will be new occupations within the next five years” so to go by today’s rules at your age is kind of crazy. You have to follow your heart and pay attention to what gets your attention. To me, physics is about understanding how the world works, and I think the future is going to be these combinations of things, and so the people who have a curious mind and a broad understanding of multiple disciplines are going to be better equipped to go with the flow of how we evolve as a society. There’s art being made that’s using sound and the physics of sound, and medicine using sound, the combinations of things people wouldn’t have dreamt of. Now, you’re an artist who’s curious about physics, but you might end up being a professor of physics who’s curious about art. Who knows?
MM: I find it a little weird that our educational structure has taken such a long time to catch up to allow people to pursue multiple fields simultaneously. I feel like it teaches you that everything is so singular and to be successful you need to specialize.
IR: You’re absolutely correct. When I say we’re in the early days of fusion, I’m referring to the corporate world, where technology companies are just starting to hire artists. I agree with you that it has to start at the educational level. At the educational level it’s a big problem that it’s not encouraged more. I actually look to hire people who have multiple interests. You’re much better off if you have two degree areas because you’ll be much more innovative in one area because of the knowledge you have in the other area. To be innovative and creative now, you have to have an interdisciplinary view of the world.
