How To Design Like Apple

Steve Jobs WWDC

I’m sick of seeing half baked products trying to be me toos to the slick products coming out of Apple (e.g. Mac, iPod, iPhone). So, here’s a list of 12 things all you wanna be’s will need (are you listening Bill, Sergey, Larry?) if you want products that look as good as and that consumers will love as much as Apple’s products:

  1. Start wearing black mock turtlenecks – all the time!
  2. Be born either Italian or French so you have natural design skills in your genes (I can hear the comments starting on this one).
  3. Actually think that you should spend at least 55% of your time on making something look good and less than 45% of your time making it (Guess that one didn’t make it to Detroit).
  4. Go to Xerox Parc and copy everything you see in sight and then tell everyone you knew that all along. Xerox, copy, get it?
  5. If you can’t go to Xerox Parc wait for Apple to release the product (Hey that Window thing sure looks familiar).
  6. Stop selling stuff by the size of your megabytes. Get some confidence in you. Just tell people what it does: Puts 1,000 songs in your pocket, not has 32Gb hard drive.
  7. Start believing that what you do does matter and that how customers feel (yes, that touchy feely stuff) about your product is more important than how they actually use it (they go hand in hand actually but you knew that). If you’re unsure about this one and are married, ask your wife.
  8. Study Buddhism, practice yoga, learn Chinese, drive a formula 1 car, play soccer – all things that over 2 billion people on the planet do. Yes, get out of YOUR box and see the world.
  9. Disband your consumer focus group department; all you’re getting is yes answers any way.
  10. Put people with a sense of design in charge of products. Make engineers and designers work together. If you don’t know how see Step #1.
  11. Listen, listen some more and then do what you think is right.
  12. Repeat daily until you get it right (see #11).

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