A lesson from Steve

Tony Fadell, speaking at a TED conference about what he learned from Steve Jobs:

Jobs insisted that his design team “stay beginner”: walk in the shoes of someone who has never experienced a product before. When a new Apple product came out, Fadell would wait in long lines at an Apple store, purchase it at the counter like everyone else, unbox it and try to get it working.

Though he may have been involved in every aspect of the iPod, taking the trek of the consumer taught him to notice the little frustrations that can destroy an otherwise good idea.

As an example, he talked about shipping a product with a charged battery. Only a few years ago, it was all-to-common to unwrap a new MP3 player with the glee of christmas morning, only to find out we had to wait a few hours to charge the device.

This is a piss-poor first impression for a product. Now, Apple products, he says, come with at least a partially charged battery. The act of “staying beginner” helps us see the frustrations that we otherwise resign ourselves to believing are fate.