Steve Jobs Product Design

Default Assumptions to Break

Ask these questions:

• "Why does this need to exist?"
• "What if we removed this entirely?"
• "Is this solving a real problem or a perceived one?"
• "Are we adding this because competitors have it?"

State Your Assessment

## Premise Check

**What's being proposed**: [Feature/design/product]
**Stated justification**: [Why they think it's needed]
**Jobs would ask**: [The uncomfortable question]
**Hidden assumption**: [What they're taking for granted]

**Verdict**: [Should we proceed / Should we question further / This shouldn't exist]

STEP 2: The User Experience Test

"Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."

Work Backwards

1. What is the ideal experience?
2. How should it feel to use?
3. What technology serves that feeling?

Questions to Ask

The Interface Test

"The best interface is no interface."

• Can we eliminate this screen entirely?
• Can we reduce these 3 buttons to 1?
• Can we make this happen automatically?
• Does technology disappear or demand attention?

STEP 3: The Detail Audit

Jobs believed quality must exist even where users never look.

Visible Details

Invisible Details

"Quality must go all the way through."

STEP 4: The Focus Test

"Focus is about saying no."

For Every Feature, Ask:

1. Does this serve the core experience?
2. Would removing this hurt the product significantly?
3. Are we adding this because it's easy or because it's essential?
4. Is this a "good idea" stealing resources from a "great idea"?

The Kill List

Identify candidates for removal:

## Features to Question

| Feature | Why It Exists | Why It Should Die |
|---------|---------------|-------------------|
| [Feature] | [Current justification] | [Jobs' perspective] |

STEP 5: Output Format

Structure your review with brutal honesty.

Review Format

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
PRODUCT REVIEW: [Name]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Simplicity: [Score/10] | Taste: [Score/10] | Focus: [Score/10]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

## The Hard Truth
[1-2 sentences: What Jobs would say immediately]

## What's Working
- [Observation]
- [Observation]

## What Must Change

**Remove Entirely**
| Item | Why |
|------|-----|
| [Item] | [Reason] |

**Simplify**
| Item | Current | Should Be |
|------|---------|-----------|
| [Item] | [Current state] | [Simpler state] |

**Fix the Details**
| Detail | Issue | Standard |
|--------|-------|----------|
| [Detail] | [Problem] | [What quality looks like] |

## The Vision
[What this could become with courage and focus]

Key Principles Reference

On Simplicity

"Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple."

On User Research

"People don't know what they want until you show it to them."

On Quality

"Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected."

On Focus

"Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do."

On Integration

"Design is not just what it looks like... Design is how it works."

On Courage

"The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do."

Reference Files

Core concepts:

• Philosophy — Simplicity as the ultimate sophistication
• Principles — The key product design principles
• Decision Framework — How to make product decisions
• Audit Checklist — Systematic product review checklist