Danny Ruchtie
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Bas Ording: Crafting the Magic of Intuitive Interfaces

In 2005, Steve Jobs watched a tiny on-screen list bounce under a finger’s flick and saw the future. The “rubber band” effect – that satisfying bounce when you scroll past the end of a list – lit a lightbulb in Jobs’s mind. “My God,” he thought, “we can build a phone out of this” . The inventor of that little piece of magic was a quiet Dutch interface designer named Bas Ording. You may not know his name, but you’ve almost certainly experienced his work. From the animated dock on your Mac, to the fluid gestures on your iPhone, to the touchscreens inside Tesla’s cars, Ording’s influence is hidden in plain sight. In a career spanning early Macintosh experiments to cutting-edge electric vehicles, Bas Ording has repeatedly redefined how we interact with technology, always with an eye for the interplay between delightful design and everyday usability.

A Dutch Designer’s Leap to Apple

Bas Ording’s journey began in the Netherlands, where he studied Interaction Design in the 1990s . A trip to Silicon Valley in 1994 left an impression – especially a brief visit to Apple’s campus, which “immediately felt like something extra was happening there”. After graduating and freelancing for a while, Ording set his sights on Apple. Through a professor’s connection, he landed an interview at Apple’s headquarters in 1998. The interview did not go smoothly at first – the nervous 26-year-old struggled under tough questioning. But a twist of fate in Apple’s lobby changed everything. Ording mustered the courage to show Steve Jobs a demo from his portfolio – a clever animation built in Director that magnified dock icons under the cursor. As the cursor moved over a row of crammed icons, each one ballooned in a fisheye effect. Jobs was floored. “I said, ‘My God,’ and hired him on the spot,” Jobs later recalled. In that moment, Apple gained a new kind of design talent – one driven by playful experimentation and visual flair.

steve jobs and Bas

Ording joined Apple’s Human Interface Group just as the company was reinventing its operating system. His very first project became one of Mac OS X’s signatures: the Dock. Working from Ording’s prototype, Apple engineered the Dock’s magnification animation – the icons swelling smoothly as you roll your mouse across them . It was a crowd-pleasing bit of Aqua UI eye-candy, unveiled by Steve Jobs in 2000 to oohs and ahhs  . “I didn’t design the Dock – that was Bas Ording, a talented young UI designer that Steve had personally recruited,” noted veteran Apple engineer James Thomson, who implemented Ording’s concept in code . The Dock brought fun and fluidity to Mac navigation, and it set the tone for Apple’s new approach to software design. Ording wasn’t done there. In those early years he contributed to Exposé, the window-swapping feature that instantly tiles all your open apps, and myriad other touches that made Aqua UI feel alive. A former colleague later described Ording’s role as designing “multiple interactions and animations we immediately recognize” in both Mac OS X and iOS .

Inventing Delight: From OS X to the iPhone

If the Mac’s bubbly Aqua interface was Ording’s first act, the multitouch revolution was his encore. In the mid-2000s, Apple began a secret project to create a touchscreen device – which would eventually become the iPhone. Ording was right at the heart of it. He had a knack for translating abstract ideas into concrete, testable demos. One of those demos was inertial scrolling with a bounce at the edges – the now-familiar behavior where a swipe scrolls a list, and it momentarily bounces when you hit the end. Jobs found this little detail delightful, and it fundamentally shaped Apple’s strategy. Seeing Ording’s prototype in action convinced Jobs that a finger-based phone interface could outshine the then-dominant stylus and keyboard smartphones. Apple pivoted to prioritize the phone project, effectively “kick-starting the iPhone’s development” with Ording’s bounce-scroll demo .

iphone touch interface

ios design team

When the iPhone finally launched in 2007, its interface was lauded for its fluid, intuitive feel – a feel that owed much to Ording’s work. He was the hands-on designer of many touch interactions that we now take for granted. The physics of scrolling lists, the snap of a swipe, and the gentle deceleration (or “kinetic” scrolling) all bear his fingerprints. In fact, Ording is listed as an inventor on Apple’s famed “rubber-band” patent (‘381), which covers the bounce-back scrolling behavior. Apple later defended this patent fiercely in court, calling it “one of the key things for the fluidity of the iPhone… one of the ones that Steve really cared about”. It’s not an overstatement to say Ording’s knack for making software feel tangible helped set the iPhone apart. “Rubber banding” made the interface fun and responsive, a quality competitors scrambled to emulate.

Ording’s influence went beyond scrolling. Remember copy-and-paste on the early iPhone? Actually, the very first iPhone infamously shipped without copy/paste, but Apple knew the feature was needed. The challenge: how to implement text selection on a tiny touch screen without a mouse or arrow keys. Ording and his teammates tackled this problem around 2008, and the solution was ingenious. They came up with the now-familiar text selection “loupe” and draggable handles – internally nicknamed the “lollipops”. Press and hold on a word, and a magnifying glass pops up under your finger, with blue grab points that you can drag to adjust the selection. Even though those handles are small, Ording ensured they have a generous invisible touch target, making them usable with a finger. As Ording later explained, the team wanted something right there “in line” with the text – direct manipulation instead of clunky menu commands. The result was a UX breakthrough tailored for touch screens. Ording’s text-selection method debuted in iPhone OS 3.0 (2009), instantly elevating the utility of the iPhone. Millions of users learned to select, copy, and paste on glass, guided by those little “pinheads” Ording had designed. It was a perfect example of Ording’s design philosophy: take a familiar task, rethink it for a new context, and make it even better than before. “We had to come up with new ways of doing stuff… specifically for touch and on such a small screen,” he said later, calling the text-selection challenge “super cool” and fun to solve.

text selection on iphone

Other iPhone interface staples carry Ording’s imprint as well. The early iPhone’s on-screen keyboard, for instance, featured subtle visual and tactile cues orchestrated in part by Ording. When you tapped a key, it popped up a zoomed version of the letter – a tiny bit of animation that gave reassurance of input. He worked on the smooth transitions when rotating the display, the way app windows minimize into icons, and more, often focusing on “the dynamic things, the animations or transitions” that make an interface feel alive. By the time the iPad arrived in 2010, Ording had spent over a decade ensuring Apple’s software not only functioned, but delighted. Little wonder that within Apple’s design teams, Bas Ording had a reputation as a “wizard”. Colleagues marveled at his restless experimentation and uncanny instinct for interactions that simply “felt good” . He could conjure user interface magic, whether it was a playful Genie effect, a bouncing list, or a perfectly tuned gesture. Yet outside Apple, his name remained largely unknown – a hidden hero behind the glass.

Design Philosophy: “Feel” Comes First

To understand Ording’s impact on user experience, it’s important to understand how he works. By all accounts, he is a prototyper at heart. Rather than writing long design specs, he would build interactive demos – often in tools like Macromedia Director early on, and later in Apple’s own prototyping environments – to try out ideas in motion . This hands-on, iterative approach meant Ording’s ideas weren’t just visually bold; they were tested for feel. If an animation was too slow or a gesture too fiddly, he’d refine it until it was just right. Former Apple VP Scott Forstall once noted that Jobs and Ording would meet every couple of weeks to discuss UI ideas . Steve Jobs held an almost fanatical belief in software that behaved intuitively and joyfully, and in Bas Ording he found a kindred spirit who could make user interfaces sing. Ording has cited how working closely with Jobs shaped him – the intensity, the attention to detail, and the willingness to pursue crazy ideas if they improved the user’s experience.

Ording’s design philosophy can be seen in the solutions he devised. Take the iOS copy-paste loupe: rather than aping desktop paradigms (like a menu bar command or right-click menu), he crafted a solution native to touch screens, one that feels like directly grabbing text. Or consider the Mac OS X Dock: it wasn’t the first app launcher bar, but by adding a magnification animation, Ording turned it into a playful, discoverable element – it invites you to run your cursor along it just for fun. In Ording’s view, a UI should invite interaction and reward the user with subtle feedback. This user-centric ethos anticipated what we now call “UX design.” Back when Ording started, “UX” wasn’t the buzzword it is today, but he was already obsessing over how satisfying a software interaction could be. By blending engineering with psychology, he helped Apple pioneer interfaces that forge an emotional connection with users. Freddy Anzures, a fellow Apple designer, described Ording’s work on the original iPhone as creating moments of joy – flick, bounce, zoom – that made people smile the first time they used multi-touch.

That focus on feel often required saying “no” to good ideas that nonetheless felt wrong. The Apple design team went through countless iterations of the iPhone’s interactions. Ording was known for quickly mocking up alternate approaches – for example, various ways to select text (some ideas had virtual magnifying glasses, others had on-screen menus) – and then rigorously testing which felt most natural. The solution that shipped, those draggable lollipop handles, succeeded because it met Ording’s standard: it was simple, tactile, and it worked with your fingers, not against them. This relentless refinement is a hallmark of Ording’s design philosophy. “You have to try a bunch of different things,” he said, describing the process as seeing in your head that something might work, then prototyping to discover unexpected insights.

Despite holding hundreds of patents for his inventions , Ording has remained humble and focused on the craft rather than the credit. He never even had a Wikipedia entry until very recently, a fact often cited to illustrate how unsung he was . In Apple lore, though, he became something of a secret weapon – the designer who could solve “impossible” interface problems with a clever bit of animation or a new gesture. By the time he reached his 15th year at Apple, Ording’s behind-the-scenes influence was immense. He had helped make the Mac fun again, and then transformed the way billions interact with pocket computers.

Patent Battles and the Next Chapter

Working so closely on Apple’s crown-jewel features had an unintended side effect: Ording’s name appeared on many high-profile patents, embroiling him in Apple’s legal battles. As Apple entered the 2010s, it was locked in a series of patent lawsuits with rivals like Samsung and HTC, defending inventions such as pinch-to-zoom and inertial scrolling. Ording, as an inventor on these patents, was repeatedly called to testify in court . The very patents that protected his team’s innovations were becoming a personal burden. In June 2014, Ording revealed that this constant legal duty was wearing him down. “I spent more time in court than designing,” he said, describing how Apple’s patent litigation had drained his passion  . It was a stark admission from someone who lived to design interactive experiences, not wage legal war. Equally impactful was the absence of Steve Jobs, who had passed away in 2011. Ording noted that he missed the bi-weekly brainstorming sessions with Jobs – the creative back-and-forth that had energized him for years . In late 2013, after roughly 15 years at Apple, Bas Ording quietly left the company.

His departure was part of a larger trend. By the mid-2010s, Tesla Motors – the Silicon Valley electric car upstart – began recruiting top talent from Apple. Ording was one of the marquee names to make the jump. In March 2015, he joined Tesla as a senior user interface designer. The move raised eyebrows in the tech press. Apple was working on secret automotive projects of its own, and here was a key Apple UI designer heading to an actual car company. Tesla, for its part, was known for the giant touchscreens in its Model S sedans, which had already drawn comparisons to iPads on wheels. Hiring Ording signaled Tesla’s determination to create in-car software as intuitive as a smartphone. It’s easy to see the appeal from Ording’s perspective too: Tesla’s culture, led by Elon Musk, prized innovation and moved fast, but unlike Apple, Tesla had openly pledged to share its patents rather than litigate over them. For someone exhausted by courtroom battles, Tesla must have felt like a chance to get back to pure design, free of patent crossfire.

Reinventing User Experience at Tesla

When Bas Ording arrived at Tesla, he entered a very different domain – yet one ripe for his skills. Cars were becoming computers, but their user interfaces were stuck in the past. Tesla was changing that with over-the-air software updates and touch-driven controls. Still, early Tesla UIs had room for improvement; they could be clunky, and traditional automakers’ infotainment systems were even worse, often frustratingly unintuitive. Ording joined Tesla’s design team with the mandate to elevate the user experience of driving. If he could make an iPhone feel simple, why not a car?

Details of Ording’s day-to-day work at Tesla remain under wraps (the company is as secretive as Apple in some ways), but the results started showing up in Tesla’s software updates. Tesla’s UI underwent a significant evolution in the late 2010s, especially with the launch of the Model 3 and the revamp of the Model S sedan’s system. By 2021, Tesla introduced a brand-new user interface in its Model S Plaid flagship, featuring a streamlined layout and snappier visuals. The interface became more customizable and visually slick, clearly inspired by modern mobile OS design. Owners noticed smoother scrolling and animations on the car’s 17-inch touch display – touches that felt, well, Apple-like. It’s not a stretch to imagine Ording’s hand in these improvements. For example, Tesla rolled out an innovative gesture-based gear selector (swipe up on the screen to shift to drive, down for reverse) in early 2021, replacing a physical stalk. That kind of bold UI experiment – using touch gestures to control a car’s functions – aligns with Ording’s penchant for rethinking interactions. Just as he once eliminated buttons and cursors, now he was helping eliminate knobs and levers. A Tesla UI designer at the time even teased on Twitter that the new UI was the work of a strengthened team that included ex-Apple folks.

tesla

Beyond specific features, Ording’s influence at Tesla is perhaps most evident in the overall feel of the software. Reviewers have praised Tesla’s system for being more responsive and “fun” to use than any other automaker’s, calling it closer to an iPad than a car console. It’s that union of functional and delightful that Ording excels at. Consider Tesla’s maps and media menus, which gained buttery-smooth scrolling and elegant physics in recent updates – echoes of the inertial scrolling that Ording perfected on the iPhone. Or take the visualization of the car’s surroundings on the instrument cluster during Autopilot: it’s graphic-heavy information, yet Tesla managed to make it intuitive and even playful (with real-time animated cars, cones, and lanes). While Tesla has a larger team working on these things, having Ording onboard surely helped enforce a high bar for interaction design.

By bringing his Apple-honed instincts to Tesla, Ording is part of a broader convergence of tech and automotive design. In the past, a car’s “user interface” meant physical dials and simple radio displays. Now it means touchscreens, gesture controls, and software behavior – exactly the canvas Ording thrives on. “Former Apple UI Designer Bas Ording Now at Tesla” read one headline in 2017, noting how the traditionally staid auto industry was snapping up people who created the iPhone’s UI magic. In many ways, Ording’s move symbolized Tesla’s ambition to make the car interface as elegantly designed as any consumer gadget. It also hinted at the unfinished business of the touch revolution: after phones, then tablets, the next frontier for great interface design is everything from appliances to cars. Bas Ording found himself at the forefront of that movement.

Legacy of a Quiet Pioneer

Bas Ording is not a household name, but his legacy lives in every tap, swipe, scroll, and click that feels just right. For over two decades, he has been one of the invisible hands molding the user experience of modern computing. Look back at the annals of Apple’s greatest UI moments – the debut of Mac OS X’s Aqua interface, the first demo of the iPhone’s multi-touch, the belated arrival of copy-paste on iOS – and you’ll find Ording’s contributions at the core of each. His work has literally touched billions of users, even if few can name him. That is finally starting to change. In recent years, Ording has been recognized more publicly as one of the “unsung Apple heroes” who brought iOS and macOS to life. A 2023 e-book profile dubs him “the genius behind key Apple designs,” crediting his inventions as pivotal to Apple’s success in the 2000s.

Ording’s design philosophy – make it intuitive, make it delightful, and sweat the details until it is – is now widely imitated across the industry. Every time you see a touch UI with a bit of playful physics or an animated flourish, there’s a lineage that traces back to the ground Ording broke at Apple. The concept of “kinetic scrolling” has become a baseline expectation in software. Contextual controls like the copy-paste handles are standard on all mobile platforms. Even outside of phones, touch interfaces from ATMs to car dashboards try to achieve that smooth, Ording-esque feel (though many fall short, reminding us how hard it is to get right).

At Tesla, Bas Ording continues to do what he’s always done: push interfaces toward that ideal blend of useful and magical. It’s fitting that he’s moved from designing the virtual dashboards on our computers and phones to designing actual car dashboards – expanding his canvas, but with the same user-first mindset. Those who know his work can spot the through-line: the delight you felt the first time you saw the Mac Dock magnify under your mouse, the first time you scrolled an iPhone and watched the content glide then bounce, the first time you effortlessly selected a snippet of text with two fingers. Bas Ording’s career is a masterclass in building technology that connects with people on an emotional level.

Quiet and unassuming, he’s the rare designer who lets the work speak louder than his ego. As one profile put it, Ording is a “little-known expert” who nonetheless was crucial to creating the iPhone as we know it . Apple’s former Human Interface chief Greg Christie once remarked that Ording could translate crazy ideas into concrete features that made people love their devices. Today, as cars become smarter and every surface gains a screen, Bas Ording’s influence only grows. He and his peers have shown that when done right, interface design can be a decisive competitive advantage – a reason you choose one product over another. It’s not just how a device looks or what it does, it’s how it makes you feel when you use it. Few have mastered that art like Bas Ording.

In an industry obsessed with specs and speeds, Ording reminds us of the human side of innovation. His story is a through-line from the Macintosh to the iPhone to Tesla’s Model S – a story of making computers more humane, one delightful interaction at a time. So the next time you flick your finger to scroll or drag a digital object and see it respond naturally, think of the designer who spent countless hours making sure it behaved just so. Chances are, Bas Ording had something to do with it.

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