Has Apple Lost Steve Jobs' Vision of Simplicity? | Ken Segall
- 6 years ago
Turns out simplicity is really, really complicated. Having worked with Steve Jobs for years as an advertising creative director on Apple products, Ken Segall has taken a blood oath to uphold the principles of simplicity. Segall's latest book is "Think Simple: How Smart Leaders Defeat Complexity" (http://goo.gl/dGL35i).
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Transcript - How does one define simplicity? Very good question. To me it is just a distilled thought; something that registers quickly; doesn't require a lot of explanations; seems intuitively obvious that kind of a thing. And I think a lot of businesses out of there tend to put things in terms that require more thought study or whatever and I think what made Steve Jobs such a genius was that he had this belief in the power of simplicity and he wanted to ensure that his products embodied that and the way the company communicated with people embodied that. So I think simplicity is this this thing, it's a concept really that gets applied to so many different things. It's not just oh look it's a simple product, it's the whole structure of the organization, the belief system, all that stuff is based on this idea that human beings have a built in desire for simpler things, we just don't like to labor over complex issues. And when someone has something to share with us, whether it's a product, it's service or whatever that the people who really understand that simplicity is a very powerful thing, those are the people who establish an emotional connection with their customers, which is something that Apple is very, very good at doing.
I do think that simplicity is one of the hardest things you can do. And it is deceptive in that way because it looks simple. The way I like to put it is that there is no such thing as simplicity, there is only the perception of simplicity, that every simple thing we see in this world, whether it's an iPhone, obviously years worth of research goes into making the little things that make an iPhone, but you can look at a simple website and we all know, we who create such things know that this beautifully simple site that you've built could have been a result of weeks or months of anguished debate and differences of opinion and arguments and whatever and you end up with something that's simple. Read Full Transcript Here: http://goo.gl/oGe26r.
Read more at BigThink.com: http://bigthink.com/videos/ken-segall-on-the-advantages-of-simplicity
Follow Big Think here:
YouTube: http://goo.gl/CPTsV5
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bigthink
Transcript - How does one define simplicity? Very good question. To me it is just a distilled thought; something that registers quickly; doesn't require a lot of explanations; seems intuitively obvious that kind of a thing. And I think a lot of businesses out of there tend to put things in terms that require more thought study or whatever and I think what made Steve Jobs such a genius was that he had this belief in the power of simplicity and he wanted to ensure that his products embodied that and the way the company communicated with people embodied that. So I think simplicity is this this thing, it's a concept really that gets applied to so many different things. It's not just oh look it's a simple product, it's the whole structure of the organization, the belief system, all that stuff is based on this idea that human beings have a built in desire for simpler things, we just don't like to labor over complex issues. And when someone has something to share with us, whether it's a product, it's service or whatever that the people who really understand that simplicity is a very powerful thing, those are the people who establish an emotional connection with their customers, which is something that Apple is very, very good at doing.
I do think that simplicity is one of the hardest things you can do. And it is deceptive in that way because it looks simple. The way I like to put it is that there is no such thing as simplicity, there is only the perception of simplicity, that every simple thing we see in this world, whether it's an iPhone, obviously years worth of research goes into making the little things that make an iPhone, but you can look at a simple website and we all know, we who create such things know that this beautifully simple site that you've built could have been a result of weeks or months of anguished debate and differences of opinion and arguments and whatever and you end up with something that's simple. Read Full Transcript Here: http://goo.gl/oGe26r.