Designing a Visionary

Politics 2.0 January 10, 2008

Aww, Steve.

Much like me, Steve loves technology and sees the potential in new, innovative products. He's a visionary - not an engineer. Sure, he grew up in the technology realm, working at HP and Atari among others, but he wasn't the real "engineer" behind Apple.

The difference between Jobs and Wozniak is this: while SteveyW loved to build nifty gadgets over and over, SteveyJ saw their potential in the marketplace. He harnessed Wozniak's ability to make a profit and change the industry. He had the vision and the means to make it happen.

It's been said that Steve "doesn't sell pieces of metal; he sells the experience." It's true. Steve is a marketer. He knows how to grab people's attention with his electrifying presentations. He's well-versed in communication and psychology. Aside from being the main product manager at Apple, he's an overall interaction designer because he knows how things should be and has been right most all of the time.

Being a visionary does not necessarily mean being capable of a hardcore talent like designing icons or programming a computer. Visionaries don't even have to be in the technology realm! (I often find myself wildly interested in several other career fields like architecture, film and journalism but I just happen to have gone into technology for college. Good choice if you ask me.)

Their skills are multi-faceted: understanding people, the world, where things can be improved and of course having a general understanding of how to do things. One of the main complaints I have about "business" people is that they think they have the vision but they lack the real passion in and general understanding of the subject matter.

As far as user experience is concerned, Steve understands what is best. When he left Apple and founded neXTSTEP, his aim was to develop a very intuitive and user-friendly operating system. Obviously it was successful and that's why it evolved into Mac OS X.

I see a lot of parallels between him and me, mostly because I share the same vision and interest in new technologies but lack the personal ability to create things solely on my own. Lucky for him, he was able to hire extremely talented engineers and visual designers to help him with his goal. I haven't been that fortunate yet - perhaps someday.

When I think about user experience concepts and where I want to be 10 years down the road, I continue to find that I belong in a Steve-like position. But I can't do it alone. Apple works not just because of Steve's direction but because of all the hundreds of hard-working, creative engineers that develop and enhance the vision.

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