Deconstructing Product Design

iPhone

Apple, 2007

1. Apple’s foray into mobile phones has set the user experience bar for telephony generally, not just mobile phones. From a feature perspective, the iPhone offers little new relative to its competitors. Its true innovation lies in the way it integrates technology to address deep user needs, versus merely accommodating superficial user wants, underscoring the difference between the two and affirming Don Norman’s observation that “when technology delivers basic needs, user experience dominates.” Jonathan Ive comments: “The word design is everything and nothing. We think of design as not just the product’s appearance, it’s what the product is, how it works. The design and the product itself are inseparable.”
2. The control surface ...