Leading Apple With Steve Jobs: Management Lessons From a Controversial Genius

Setting Standards: Design

Steve’s concept of design was best captured in a line that he would sometimes throw at Apple teams that weren’t meeting his standard: “Design isn’t just what the product looks like or even what it feels like. Design is how it works.”

Do you remember what it felt like to use an iPod for the first time? The iPod wasn’t the world’s first MP3 player—it was just the first to combine great looks with an interface that you knew how to use as soon as you picked it up. It just worked intuitively. As of this writing 10 years later, no company has an equivalent product, a viable competitor, for the iPod.

Remember that an eye-catching appearance is just one part of what needs to be a cohesive whole. Steve was the model of a man for whom there was no aspect of a product that was too small to do right.