Walter Isaacson, the writer who produced Steve Jobs’ biography, contends that Job’s obsession with simplicity was what drove a design revolution within technology. Apple products are known for their unique look, with sleek designs that are inviting and welcoming to the user. “Jobs felt that a core component of design simplicity was making products intuitively easy to use” (Isaacson 2). Jobs argues that these two things do not always go hand in hand, and often companies do one while neglecting the other. The result is products that are too intimidating in their design, or too simple and cheap looking. Because Jobs valued design and technology equally, he was able to maintain a holistic perspective of how his products should look, feel, and work for a user.
The video of Jobs revealing the iPhone for the first time perfectly captures his focus on design simplicity. He can boil down each product to a single phrase– ‘IPod with touch control’, ‘Revolutionary mobile phone’, ‘Breakthrough internet communicator. The user does not need to know the details of how each product was created and works. The user only needs to understand how they interact with the product itself, which Apple has made incredibly easy to do. These Apple products were able to succeed at such great heights because they integrated hardware and software to create a seamless user experience. Take the iPod and iTunes, which succeeded as individual entities because they relied on one another to round out the user experience.
As Job famously said, “How can someone know what they want if they cannot see it?”. These famous words are at the root of all Apple products, which have changed the way that society functions and interacts with one another. It is hard to deny that Apple products have reigned superior to other technology companies when the design and experience of using an Apple product are unmatched. Jobs said that Apple wanted to make technology approachable, fun, and enjoyable so that even the elderly would be inclined to try it. To do so, Jobs had to go in-depth into every product, understand the ins and outs, and pick away piece by piece to eliminate complexity. “You have to deeply understand the essence of a product to be able to get rid of the parts that are not essential” (Isaacson 4). This mentality was what drove Jobs to create such incredible products and change the way that technology is designed forever.
I think it’s interesting to see how Jobs was more successful than other tech companies by thinking “smarter, not harder,” necessarily, when using a tactic of tech development that focuses on simplicity and easiest user experience. People need to feel like technology is approachable and less intimidating because it has easy-to-operate features, so this small aspect of technology design has put Apple on the highest tier of desired tech devices, creating almost a monopoly over other products when individuals go out to buy their next phone. I have also noticed that the vast majority of people I interact with on a daily basis all have Apple products, mainly a version of the IPhone or a Mac computer, and it is quite rare to see an Android or any other product. I think it’s brilliant that Jobs limiting complexity has appealed so heavily to people, allowing Apple to dominate the tech industry.
I agree that simplicity of design is incredibly important in that it allows people of all ages to use the same technology and makes it less intimidating and more approachable. I think it has become a bit more difficult from when Steve Jobs displayed the iPhone to now, as today it is much easier to just throw a bunch of ideas towards solving a problem or keeping up with a trend, as our relationship with technology has become more complex. Yet like we’ve seen with Apple, which is probably the best example, a simple design that is easy to navigate and use keeps people engaged. It is interesting to connect this to the article that I read this week that focuses on the impact of gamification. Gamification at its core is adding features that make it a more fun and ‘playful’ experience for users so it makes me wonder if gamification and simple design can really work in hand in hand.
I totally agree, and many of your points actually relate back to the article I read about Instagram Stories and sociability as well. According to the piece I read, over 60% of Instagram Stories users said that they either didn’t know how to use or didn’t choose to use many of the platform’s available features. While all the bells and whistles may allow for more “advanced” capabilities, this shows that simpler is often better. Many times when apps have design “updates,” users end up more distraught than happy. Instagram’s recent update, for example, changed the feed from showing content chronologically to providing content based on “relevance.” While the transition to serve users content more “relevant” to them was likely well-intentioned, people were ultimately upset by the change. They had already been comfortable with the prior design and didn’t like having to adjust to a new format. When people are more easily able to navigate a technology, they have to put less effort into using that platform. I know I personally would much rather use a simpler app that requires less brain power than one with more advanced — and confusing — features.
It’s true that Job’s was able to completely revolutionize the field of design. Now, everything is modeled in a sense after apple’s sleek simplicity. The minimal displays and simple interface and easy-to-learn uses are exactly why it’s so ingrained in our day to day life now. Apple has set the standard for design, and personally, I think it has defined what is considered good taste in tech, something that not many would agree upon. Think of the aesthetic alone that apple has, tech companies are rarely offering any kind of other option, and certainly not one that is aggressively the antithesis of apple, complex, bold and colored. I would be interested to see how far apple takes their simplicity before we’ve either boiled their concept too far down, or is repeating themselves to an obvious extent.