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Authors: Leander Kahney
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anticipated and what needs refining. By definition, these studies need users who are unfamiliar with the technology, or they will skew the study. “User groups need naïve users,” Whitney explained. “But these users can’t tell you what they want. You have to watch them to discover what they want.”
Whitney said Sony would never have invented the Walkman if it had listened to its users. The company actually conducted a lot of research before releasing it. “All the marketing data said the Walkman was going to fail. It was unambiguous. No one would buy it. But [founder Akio] Marita pushed it through anyway. He knew. Jobs is the same. He has no need for user groups because he is a user experience expert.” 8
“We have a lot of customers, and we have a lot of research into our installed base,” Jobs told Business Week . “We also watch industry trends pretty carefully. But in the end, for something this complicated, it’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” 9
Jobs is Apple’s one-man focus group. One of his great strengths is that he’s not an engineer. Jobs has no formal training in engineering or programming. He doesn’t have a business degree. In fact, he doesn’t have a degree at all. He’s a college dropout. Jobs doesn’t think like an engineer. He thinks like a layman, which makes him the perfect test bed for Apple’s products. He is Apple’s Everyman, the ideal Apple customer. “Technically he’s at the serious hobbyist level,” said Dag Spicer, a senior curator with the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. “He had no formal training, but he’s followed technology since a teenager. He’s technically aware enough to follow trends, like a good stock analyst. He has a layman’s view. It’s a great as set.” 10
Guy Kawasaki, Apple’s former chief evangelist, told me that the budge at Apple for focus groups and market research is a negative number—and he was only slightly exaggerating. Apple, like most corporations, does spend money on researching its customers, but Jobs certainly doesn’t poll users when developing new products. “Steve Jobs doesn’t do market research,” Kawasaki said. “Market research for Steve Jobs is the right hemisphere talks to the left hemisphere.” 11
Lessons from Steve
• Be a despot . Someone’s got to make the call. Jobs is Apple’s one-man focus group. It’s not how other companies do it, but it works.
• Generate alternatives and pick the best. Jobs insists on choices.
• Design pixel by pixel. Get way down in the details. Jobs paid attention to the tiniest details. You should, too.
• Simplify. Simplifying means stripping back. Here is Jobs’s focus again: simplifying means saying “no.”
• Don’t be afraid to start from scratch. Mac OS X was worth doing over, even if it took one thousand programmers three years of nonstop toil to do it.
• Avoid the Osborne e ff ect . Keep the new goodies secret until they’re ready to ship, lest customers stop buying the current stuff while waiting for the new stuff.
• Don’t shit on your own doorstep . Apple’s engineers hated the old Mac OS, but Jobs ordered a positive spin on it.
• When it comes to ideas, anything is game. Jobs is not a design radical, but he is willing to try new things.
• Find an easy way to present new ideas. If it means spreading glossy sheets all over a big conference table, get a big printer.
• Don’t listen to your customers. They don’t know what they want.
Chapter 3
Perfectionism: Product Design and the Pursuit of Excellence
“Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”
—Steve Jobs
In January 1999, the day before the introduction of a new line of multicolored iMacs, Steve Jobs was practicing his product presentation at a big auditorium near Apple’s HQ. A reporter from Time
Whitney said Sony would never have invented the Walkman if it had listened to its users. The company actually conducted a lot of research before releasing it. “All the marketing data said the Walkman was going to fail. It was unambiguous. No one would buy it. But [founder Akio] Marita pushed it through anyway. He knew. Jobs is the same. He has no need for user groups because he is a user experience expert.” 8
“We have a lot of customers, and we have a lot of research into our installed base,” Jobs told Business Week . “We also watch industry trends pretty carefully. But in the end, for something this complicated, it’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” 9
Jobs is Apple’s one-man focus group. One of his great strengths is that he’s not an engineer. Jobs has no formal training in engineering or programming. He doesn’t have a business degree. In fact, he doesn’t have a degree at all. He’s a college dropout. Jobs doesn’t think like an engineer. He thinks like a layman, which makes him the perfect test bed for Apple’s products. He is Apple’s Everyman, the ideal Apple customer. “Technically he’s at the serious hobbyist level,” said Dag Spicer, a senior curator with the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. “He had no formal training, but he’s followed technology since a teenager. He’s technically aware enough to follow trends, like a good stock analyst. He has a layman’s view. It’s a great as set.” 10
Guy Kawasaki, Apple’s former chief evangelist, told me that the budge at Apple for focus groups and market research is a negative number—and he was only slightly exaggerating. Apple, like most corporations, does spend money on researching its customers, but Jobs certainly doesn’t poll users when developing new products. “Steve Jobs doesn’t do market research,” Kawasaki said. “Market research for Steve Jobs is the right hemisphere talks to the left hemisphere.” 11
Lessons from Steve
• Be a despot . Someone’s got to make the call. Jobs is Apple’s one-man focus group. It’s not how other companies do it, but it works.
• Generate alternatives and pick the best. Jobs insists on choices.
• Design pixel by pixel. Get way down in the details. Jobs paid attention to the tiniest details. You should, too.
• Simplify. Simplifying means stripping back. Here is Jobs’s focus again: simplifying means saying “no.”
• Don’t be afraid to start from scratch. Mac OS X was worth doing over, even if it took one thousand programmers three years of nonstop toil to do it.
• Avoid the Osborne e ff ect . Keep the new goodies secret until they’re ready to ship, lest customers stop buying the current stuff while waiting for the new stuff.
• Don’t shit on your own doorstep . Apple’s engineers hated the old Mac OS, but Jobs ordered a positive spin on it.
• When it comes to ideas, anything is game. Jobs is not a design radical, but he is willing to try new things.
• Find an easy way to present new ideas. If it means spreading glossy sheets all over a big conference table, get a big printer.
• Don’t listen to your customers. They don’t know what they want.
Chapter 3
Perfectionism: Product Design and the Pursuit of Excellence
“Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”
—Steve Jobs
In January 1999, the day before the introduction of a new line of multicolored iMacs, Steve Jobs was practicing his product presentation at a big auditorium near Apple’s HQ. A reporter from Time
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