3 Amazing, fantastic, magical and unbelievably simple product and brand development tips from Apple’s Steve Jobs
Earlier this month the iPad 2 was released. And unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past year, the iPad has taken the post–PC, tablet market by storm in less than twelve months.
There is no doubt that the discipline of design thinking has played a contributing role in the iPad’s success to date. Moreover, it’s the general operating philosophy of Apple’s Steve Jobs and his team — to get products and services right the first time by optimizing the entire brand experience from all points of contact, including the point of choice.
If you’re a technology company still focused on “speeds and feeds” as the grand product differentiator, you’re missing the point entirely. As Jobs pointed out last week during the much anticipated iPad 2 unveiling, “Technology alone is not enough … It’s about technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities,” said Jobs. I would agree. If you focus only on the product and not the human component, you’re going to lose, and lose big.
Here are three amazing, fantastic, magical and unbelievably simple tips garnered from Jobs that lead to revolutionary product thinking and exponential business growth opportunities:
- Educate customers, be accessible when they have issues
- Innovate, design toward thinner, lighter, faster and more intuitive
- Refine and improve upon the functionality, always make products/services easier to use
These are fairly straightforward operating principles that can easily be employed. Look at your entire product and service experience from the audience’s perspective. That means ALL areas including retail, online, education, marketing, advertising, shipping, packaging, service, product, etc.
Each experience should be rock solid in terms of audience experience and each area or discipline should seamlessly dovetail into the next.
