Evans Hankey, successor to Jony Quince, leaves Apple after three years

Evans Hankey, Apple’s vice president of industrial design since 2019, has announced plans to leave the company in the coming months. Apple has confirmed its impending exit from Bloomberg.

She served as lead hardware designer once held by Jony Ive. Prior to taking on this role, Hankey reported to Quince for several years. Since 2019, she has reported to Jeff Williams, Apple’s COO. She manages dozens of industrial designers in the company. While Ive once oversaw both industrial and software design, Hankey was only responsible for the hardware. According to sources who spoke to Bloomberg, Apple’s head of software development Alan Dai will remain in his position.

It’s unclear what this will mean for Apple’s hardware design team going forward. The company has several major hardware projects underway, including a long-delayed mixed reality headset, as well as the usual list of new iPhones, Macs, iPads, and wearables like the Apple Watch and AirPods. Further delays associated with this departure seem unlikely, but whoever Apple chooses as its successor could have a big impact on the company’s design philosophy going forward.

Industrial design has always been at the heart of Apple’s corporate identity and customer value proposition. It was Jony Ive, in tandem with Steve Jobs, who spearheaded the design of the products that made Apple what it is today, such as the iPhone. Ive left Apple in 2019 to start his own design firm, which until recently considered Apple a client. After he left, Apple took a markedly different approach to hardware design, although it may be more in line with where Apple is in the market today. The same shift could happen again under new leadership. Since the product development time is somewhat long, we are unlikely to see any changes in the products for a few more years.