4 ms·
Actually, this is a fine lesson in persuasion, something that Chip and Dan Heath point out in Switch and Made to Stick; that is, reasoning that is highly concre
by siglesias 16y ago
Actually, this is a fine lesson in persuasion, something that Chip and Dan Heath point out in Switch and Made to Stick; that is, reasoning that is highly concrete and visual is far more convincing and impactful than appeal to models, forecasts, spreadsheets, and schematics. I think Jobs here could have simply demanded rounded rectangles or appealed to some vague need for geometric completeness in the product, but imagine how powerful it must have been to take a walk outside and actually see how reality presented rounded rectangles at every turn, and how truly crippling the program would feel with this observation in mind if it didn't ship with the feature. The lesson is to reach beyond the world of formal logic and into the visceral world of sight and touch, where the real "aha" and gut judgments reside.
Here's another example, cited in the design and creation of the Palm Pilot:
"Jeff Hawkins, the team leader, wanted the Palm Pilot to be simple. It would handle only four things: calendars, contacts, memos, and task lists, but it would do them well. Hawkins fought feature creep by carrying around a wooden block the size of the Palm. Hawkins would pull out the wooden block to "take notes" during a meeting or "check his calendar" in the hallway. When someone would suggest another feature, Hawkins would pull out the wooden block and ask them where it would fit. Hawkins knew that the core idea of his project needed to be elegance and simplicity. In sharing this core idea, Hawkins and his team used what was, in essence, a visual proverb. The block of wood became a visual reminder to do a few things and do them well."
taken from http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/bmag/sbsm0702/feature_ideas.html http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/bmag/sbsm0702/feature_ideas...
- chunkbot 16y agoWe're fitting a lot more into a wooden block than we used to.
- duck 16y agoI wonder if that wooden block had rounded corners?
- megablast 16y agoLove you last example, but of course what made the Palm so useful, and later on the iPhone, was the ability to add or code any application that you wanted. Palm eventually did this, and Apple made it incredibly easy (although 1 year after the first iPhones release).
- 10ren 16y agoYou're right; but I think uprooting the persuasion from its source kills it. Steve didn't use that technique because it was persuasive; he used it because that's what he saw. After that calligraph class that connected so deeply, I bet he became aware of curved corners everywhere; and hated that computers rendered everything squarely... so when he saw fast curves, he grabbed it by the neck. When questioned, he probably spluttered "b-b-but look! all around you! can't you see?!" It's not a persuasion technique; but simply sharing the reality he saw. Uproot it from reality and use it in isolation, and it has no life in it to persuade. Therefore: improve at seeing, not persuading. (He'd have been more savvy at persuasion techniques if he'd complimented the poor guy first.)