Ep. 89: VP of Google Hardware Design Ivy Ross [encore]

**Ivy Ross** (0:05)
Design is about solving problems within boundaries. What does it have to cost to make? What are the limitations technically?
Like, I love all those challenges, and then, you know, you have to have boundaries to be able to break through them.

**Amy Devers** (0:19)
Hey everyone, I'm Amy Devers.

**Jamie Derringer** (0:21)
I'm Jamie Derringer, and this is Clever. And today we're talking to Google's Head of Hardware Design, Ivy Ross.
So yeah, that's what she does now. All those beautiful home speakers with luxe fabric textures and pottery-like forms, that was under her direction, in addition to some other really exciting explorations, which we will talk about. But prior to Google, she's lived many lives.

**Amy Devers** (0:45)
Her first professional life was as a jewelry designer and maker. Always an innovator, she pioneered a way of working with titanium and niobium, and her pieces were acquired into the permanent collections of ten museums by the time she was 26
She transitioned into the corporate world to be able to keep exploring her creativity. I know, it sounds counterintuitive, but when you hear Ivy tell it, it makes perfect sense.

**Jamie Derringer** (1:11)
And in her many design leadership roles at different brands like Gap, Swatch and Mattel, she not only led design teams, she grew new creative culture and devised new systems of collaboration. Now at Google, she's tasked herself and her team with understanding what it feels like to hold Google in your hand.

**Amy Devers** (1:31)
And when we talked, she had just returned from the Milan Furniture Fair, where Google had mounted an interactive installation measuring neuroesthetics or the effect of your surroundings on your well-being.
Very exciting and fascinating stuff. So open your mind and hold on to your hat. We're pretty convinced she's magic. Let's talk to Ivy.

**Ivy Ross** (1:56)
My name is Ivy Ross. I currently live in Mill Valley, California, and I make magic.
And I like to do it because I make something out of nothing along with others.

**Amy Devers** (2:12)
And you have been doing that your whole life from what I can tell from the research that I've done. And I love that you describe it as magic. I mean, it just speaks to the wonder that you must bring to it. Jamie and I always like to go way back to zero, so that we can kind of understand, get a sense of the foundation or the soil that sprouted the seed. Can you tell us about your childhood, your hometown and your family dynamic?

**Ivy Ross** (2:39)
Yes, because I agree, it does all start there.
My father, Herbert Ross, not the movie producer, but he worked for Raymond Lowy, the famous industrial designer in the 50s, who was very instrumental, I think the Marlboro Cigarette Package, the Coke Bottle. And I grew up in a home that was very ahead of its time. My dad designed it like Frank Lloyd Wright type. I mean, he did every door knob, every single detail. And it was so ahead of its time that actually Andy Warhol made a movie in it to represent the future. So I grew up in a very unusual family and my dad was really a visionary. He taught me how to see things beyond what they appear to be. What I mean by that is he would say to me, Ivy, look up at that light fixture. Look at the way it's connected. What can you learn from that connection and what else could be connected that way? Or we'd be walking, looking at the hubcap of a car. And I actually think that's why I became a metalsmith at first because he actually was a car designer also and designed the Studebaker Hawk in 1955 And I think he wanted a son first and he got a daughter, but that didn't matter. He took me to all the car shows. And when I was five years old, I was eye level with the hubcaps of the cars. While he was looking at the women in mini skirts and go-go boots, opening the car doors, I was like fixated in front of eye level with the hubcap. And because he taught me how to investigate things, how they're made, the connections, he almost, when I look back, he taught me how to get into this flow state of creativity at an early age. So I was there getting lost in each hubcap, looking at the different connections. And then he picked me up and moved me to the next car. I do think he gave me the gift of seeing the world and seeing it beyond what it appears to be. And I'm very grateful for that. I didn't realize that until I think I was in my 20s being interviewed for some magazine. They said, where did you get your sense of creativity from? And I realized it was him. It was him starting at an early age, pointing things out to me, and almost exercising that muscle of looking at something, learning from it, and being creative of how it could be applied.