Top 3 Design lessons that I learned from Steve Jobs

It is quite tough to summarise to 3 lessons. Given the current design environment, I think these top 3 points might do the needful.

Be an artist

An artist seduces the people with his/her work and creates a ‘wow’ factor. When the artist mindset is applied to solving design problems, it is absolute magic. That’s what Steve Jobs did in his entire career. ‘Design is hard, math is easy’ — this term becomes real only when you dwell into the customer’s mind and seduce them with your design. The ‘wow’ factor can only be created when you can surprise them with your design solution they haven’t even imagined.

“Picasso had a saying. He said, ‘Good artists copy, great artists steal.’ And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas and I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.”

— PBS’s “Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires” (1996)

End to end Knowledge

To craft the mastery experience, the creators should’ve an end to end knowledge of the process, from the idea to design to development to build to shipping. The ideas are so fragile, and anybody can come and break it by saying some stupid reason. To fight back strong, the knowledge of the complete process is essential. The Mac’s boot time is so fast than any other PCs is because Steve Jobs was aware of the technology. The iTunes store and iPod revolutionized the music industry because Jobs was aware of the music business, and the storage and battery tech to make the compact music player that can hold a million songs. Apple’s product packaging is so good because he was aware of the precision level printing works. Moreover, to design that actually works, you got to have a personal understanding of business and tech, instead, someone dictates how it should work.

“What are you showing me this for? This is a piece of crap! Anybody could build a better drive than this.”

“Steve and I spent a lot of time on the packaging,” said Ive. “ I love the process of unpacking something. You design a ritual of unpacking to make the product feel special. Packaging can be theater, it can create a story.”

Precision

Well, we all know about Apple’s precision. It doesn’t come in a single day. It is a process and practice, and slowly it became a basic behavior for them. For all this, we have to start at someplace and keep tuning ourselves. When I was 12 years old, I was amazed by seeing the first iMac design that sparked every detail’s importance, and later the Mac OS X, the interface was crystal clear with the smooth transitions, the details in every pixel. Wow! Until now, the practice is followed up to an extent. It is tough to keep consistency. Discipline, and breaking the rules smartly is the key to this, I believe.

Watch Jobs firing an engineer who didn’t care about the fonts. https://youtu.be/w96oTapYTKk

“We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.”

— Fortune magazine (via WikiQuote)

In your view, you might’ve learned something different from Steve Jobs. Please do share it in comments.

Thanks for reading!