9MaySimplicity: a lesson from the biography of Steve Jobs

If you haven’t already bought a copy of Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs, I encourage you to do so. This brilliant book chronicles the life of Steve Jobs, and the author was given permission from the man himself to tell the story exactly as it happened. One of the recurring themes throughout the book was Steve Jobs’ emphasis on simplicity. From product design to user experience, Jobs emphasis on simplicity resulted in world class products and multiple technological revolutions, albeit sometimes at the expense of functionality. With that in mind, what lessons can we take away from the man’s obsession with simplicity?

From a day to day work point of view, keeping things simple will go along way to making your job easier and you more efficient. For starters, de-cluttering your cubicle, closing unused applications on your desktop and spending the time to organize and prioritize your tasks will instantly drop your stress level down a few notches and help to clear your mind. I’ve found that by midday I’ll usually have about 15-20 applications open, am swimming in a stack of papers, and have multiple concurrent conversations happening via phone, Skype and email. During these crazy times I stop and think what Steve Jobs would do. In most cases I just stop, close everything down and clear the desk. Then write down on the white board everything that is happening and start to process it serially. This might mean leaving email off, or putting off a task, but in the end it all gets done anyways.

For product usability, Steve was king. From the first Macs of the 1980’s to the hospital equipment he was hooked up to in the last few years of his life, Steve would look closely at the human factors of the hardware and critique them. We too should be doing the same. The fact that “usability” has only been a buzzword in recent years should be a clear indicator that we’ve been going down the wrong path in product design. Of course Steve often took this a little too far. For example, when designing a version of the iPhone, he insisted on a metal casing for a sleek design and polished feel, at the expense of introducing the infamous antenna reception problem. The lesson then is to fuse product usability with design and engineering right from the start. Apple nailed this because their departments have always worked in concert. While achieving this in other large corporations set in their ways may be difficult, efforts should be made by decision makers to bring people together from different departments throughout the entire development lifecycle.

Presentations are another area where we can all learn from Steve. Like his products, his presentations were worthy of an award. His visuals were kept simple and minimal. One look at his slides and you could instantly see what message he was about to convey. Not only that but he also let the products do the talking. Simply unveiling a new product from under a cloth cover said it all and was often enough to invoke standing ovations. While your next managerial presentation or course you teach probably won’t elicit much applause, you should also strive for simplicity to reach your audience. For more information please see our past articles: Effective Power Point Presentations and A holistic approach to PowerPoint presentations.

So next time you’re tackling an engineering problem, designing a new product or customer experience, or simply trying to bring Zen to your cubicle, think about what you can do to simplify things, and the rest will inevitably fall into place.