Steven Paul Jobs 1955 – 2011

Steve Jobs died today.

There’s no use repeat­ing what has already been said: that he was a vision­ary, a genius, bril­liant, and so on. It’s cus­tom­ary to speak well of the recent­ly passed, but the truth is rich­er and more nuanced. Steve Jobs did not make his con­tri­bu­tions by invent­ing every last com­po­nent or by mak­ing every design deci­sion in Apple’s prod­ucts, a fact his crit­ics like to point out. But he did see things in a way too few of us who work in tech­nol­o­gy do: from the point of view of the end user, unversed in the mag­ic of the tech­nol­o­gy he produced.

Many peo­ple will today describe the «secret to Apple’s suc­cess» and while there is no sin­gle fac­tor, Jobs was infa­mous for stand­ing firm on design deci­sions and tech­nol­o­gy that sup­port­ed the users of Apple’s prod­ucts. Too often when those of us who work with tech­nol­o­gy are proud of our accom­plish­ments, we leave what­ev­er step for­ward we made in its unpol­ished state. We are impressed with the idea behind what we’ve done and neglect to fol­low through with its prac­ti­cal utility.

I’ve deliv­ered prod­ucts to clients that at the time I was proud of for what the client could now do. I’ve writ­ten a web-based con­tent man­age­ment and ecom­merce sys­tem with a vari­ety of tools, all acces­si­ble through the Web brows­er. I was proud to show the client how they could man­age their Web con­tent and update the prod­ucts in their store. The process was a lit­tle awk­ward, per­haps, but it beat the heck out of going in to the data­base to issue SQL queries every time they want­ed to change a price.

As I con­struct­ed these sys­tems, I saw at every step the lay­ers of com­plex­i­ty I was sim­pli­fy­ing. From my per­spec­tive, I was mak­ing dif­fi­cult tasks eas­i­er, and it was true. From the clien­t’s per­spec­tive how­ev­er, I deliv­ered a con­vo­lut­ed and com­plex set of tasks that had to be done. Even though my client could see how valu­able these tools were, there were still these cum­ber­some tools to learn, repet­i­tive steps to mem­o­rize, arcane terms to interpret.

One of the first pieces of advice my father gave me regard­ing pro­gram­ming — I must have been ten or eleven — was: there is no DWIM com­mand. DWIM is an acronym for do what I mean. When I give direc­tions to a dri­ver of a car I’m rid­ing in and point left while say­ing «turn right» the dri­ver might laugh at me, but she or he will point the car in the cor­rect direc­tion. Com­put­ers — machines of any sort, real­ly — have no capac­i­ty to inter­pret intent beyond the instruc­tions fed to them. Even advanced com­put­ers that employ fuzzy log­ic to give us the expe­ri­ence of doing what we mean rather than what we say are fol­low­ing high­ly com­plex sets of instruc­tions in order to give us the appear­ance of inter­pre­ta­tion that we desire. 

When cre­at­ing tech­no­log­i­cal prod­ucts it is there­fore very easy to get caught up in every­thing we’ve done and for­get what has been left undone. In order to solve prob­lems with tech­nol­o­gy one must deeply under­stand the prob­lems on a lev­el so rudi­men­ta­ry it’s not just easy to for­get how every­thing will be used, it’s near­ly impos­si­ble to remem­ber how the work will appear in the user’s hands. We learn to think like a com­put­er, become effec­tive at solv­ing com­put­er prob­lems, and for­get to solve human prob­lems in the process.

Steve Jobs did not ever for­get how his com­pa­nies’ prod­ucts would be used, and he stood firm for his cus­tomers to be able to use these prod­ucts in a man­ner which seems sim­ple, straight­for­ward, and even relaxed. It’s pos­si­ble to dis­agree with some of his design deci­sions — I do — but no one can deny that Jobs was uncom­pro­mis­ing in his advo­ca­cy for the best pos­si­ble user experience.

This insis­tence on pol­ish­ing every rough edge and straight­en­ing every usabil­i­ty zig and zag is why Apple’s com­peti­tors are befud­dled by Apple cus­tomers ignor­ing the bells and whis­tles they offer. It’s why peo­ple buy iPhones instead of phones with faster proces­sors, larg­er screens, and fea­turelists that must be shown in tiny print in order to see them in one place. It’s why ordi­nary peo­ple devel­oped emo­tion­al (even irra­tional) attach­ment to their elec­tron­ic devices. Jobs advo­cat­ed for ele­gance and for his prod­ucts to work for the peo­ple in whose hands they would end up.

It’s wrong to attribute Apple’s suc­cess to mar­ket­ing in the tra­di­tion­al sense of the word. Apple’s adver­tise­ments reflect a design phi­los­o­phy where the prod­ucts advo­cate for their own use. The prod­ucts are invit­ing and sat­is­fy­ing to use, mak­ing tasks not easy but rather acces­si­ble. Yes, Apple’s mar­ket­ing is acces­si­ble, but that too is why it is effec­tive and giv­en cred­it for Apple’s success.

As we note the pass­ing of a man so influ­en­tial to the ways so many of us work, com­mu­ni­cate, and even be enter­tained, it is that advo­ca­cy for the user that I want to acknowl­edge. The indus­try has suf­fered a loss, yes. But the real loss is not to those of us who are mak­ing soft­ware and tech­no­log­i­cal prod­ucts; the real loss is to those we serve, those peo­ple who ulti­mate­ly sign our pay­checks. Steve Jobs advo­cat­ed for the end-user and con­tin­u­al­ly raised the stakes in the job of pleas­ing the cus­tomer. That did not serve our lazi­ness or our desire to get things done quick­ly and cheap­ly. It served our users.

I did not have the priv­i­lege of know­ing Steve Jobs per­son­al­ly, but the news of his death stunned me. There is a hole in the indus­try where he stood. It’s up to each of us that works in tech­nol­o­gy to step up and become advo­cates for our users with the same tenac­i­ty. It’s up to us, whether we build Web sites or micro­proces­sors, to remem­ber that the usabil­i­ty of what we cre­ate may not be our first job, but we ought to ensure that it is our last.

Good­bye Steve. Namaste.