

How To Design Like Apple - asimjalis
http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/publications/magazine/6/4/you_cant_innovate_like_apple

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grellas
_This is straight from Jobs’ mouth: We do no market research. They scoff at
the notion of target markets, and they don’t conduct focus groups. Why?
Because everything Apple designs is based on Jobs’ and his team’s perceptions
of what they think is cool._

Of all the items cited in this fine piece, this is the most important: true
creativity is the product of a creator's vision and not of consensus. This
holds true in all fields and in all times, in my view. Consensus aims for the
average or the expected; creative genius will always strive for more.

That said, it is quite risky for an average company to defy conventional
conceptions of target markets and the like in building on their vision. It is
only the very exceptional company that can do this successfully.

~~~
j-g-faustus
Along the same lines, Donald Norman (usability guru, started the usability
field almost single-handedly with the book "The Design of Everyday Things")
recently said:

"I've come to a disconcerting conclusion: design research is great when it
comes to improving existing product categories but essentially useless when it
comes to new, innovative breakthroughs."
<http://jnd.org/dn.mss/technology_first_needs_last.html>

You can't ignore customers completely. Apple discovered this with the Lisa
computer in the 1980s, which apparently was amazing for its time, but at
$10,000 found no market. Perhaps Lisa was the computer Jobs wanted for
himself, but it turned out that few others were willing to shell out that kind
of money.

On the other hand, it is clearly pointless to ask consumers how to design
attractive or revolutionary hardware or software - you're the expert, you
figure it out.

But this doesn't necessarily mean that you ignore target markets altogether -
the iPad is innovative, but still clearly focused on a particular set of use
cases with a price to make it competitive with netbooks.

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bmalicoat
10-3-1 is an interesting technique, if you can afford it. It seems like a much
better approach than iterating on a single design because iterating means you
are slowly evolving from one design to the next. But having 10 different
designs to cull from would provide a much broader range.

I think the key, though, is owning the entire system, hardware and software.
They can integrate everything with their eye for detail and no other vendor
can sully it with corner-cutting.

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kalid
10-3-1 is extremely expensive, but even 3-1 could give a lot of benefits.

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Frazzydee
> There is no “Lorem Ipsum” used as filler for content, either

There is here: <http://www.apple.com/iwork/pages/> (look above "Streamlined
word processing")

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daniel02216
The lorem ipsum is for the templates, not the actual examples.

