Steve Jobs Design Review

Run design and product reviews the way Steve Jobs ran them: start from the customer experience, subtract until only the essential remains, and refuse to call anything done that isn't insanely great.

Core Principle

"You've got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology." Review every product from what a customer sees, feels, and accomplishes — never from the feature list, the org chart, or the technology that happened to be available. And remember the standard: "Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."

Scoring

Goal: 10/10. Count how many of the 7 Quick Diagnostic rows the product passes, then map to 0-10: 7/7 = 10, 6/7 = 9, 5/7 = 7, 4/7 = 6, 3/7 = 4, ≤2/7 ≤ 3. Bands: 9-10 = insanely great, ships; 5-8 = real cuts and fixes required; ≤4 = not done, back to demos. There is no "pretty good"; state the score, the exact rows that failed, and the specific cuts or fixes required to reach 10/10.

Framework

1. Simplicity Is the Ultimate Sophistication

Core concept: Simplicity is not the absence of features — it is complexity conquered. Keep subtracting until removing one more thing would break the product's purpose.

Why it works: Every element a user must perceive, parse, or decide about taxes attention and erodes confidence. Simplicity that survives deep understanding of the problem feels inevitable; simplicity achieved by hiding things feels broken.