What I Learned From Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs passed away today and the world lost a great visionary, designer, architect, and technologist. He truly changed the world… for the better!

I recently wrote a couple of posts about Jobs: Customer Experience Lessons From Steve Jobs and Stop Listening To Customers… Sometimes. To honor his passing, I want to share some additional thoughts about what I’ve learned from him:

• Passion can be an extremely powerful transformational force
• Great architecture requires a singular vision to align the 1,000s of little decisions
• Design isn’t something you can just layer on to a product, it needs to be integrated throughout the process
• Great design can motivate people to try new things
• Customers can’t easily articulate their desires, especially for new technology
• Simple and easy is a wonderful design goal
• Every device has a primary objective that should never be compromised
• When it comes to design, every little thing counts

The bottom line: Thank you Steve, you will be missed but not forgotten. R.I.P.

P.S. I loved the way that President Obama described Jobs: “…Steve was among the greatest of American innovators – brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it…”