“Do as much research as you can + Never copy, only get influenced”
—I Used to Be a Design Student – advice on design and life from famous successful designers
Steve Jobs and The Designer
I know there are a lot of these types of posts floating around, but I wanted to talk quickly about something that Steve Jobs made me realize as a designer.
At a party last week I was having a discussion with a banker about design. It was another world to him and he was extremely curious. He asked me a simple question.
“How do you know what people want?”
And I told him that a designers job isn’t to figure out what people want, it’s to give them something they never knew they wanted.
There’s a famous quote allegedly from Henry Ford (the automobile maker):
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
And it was true for Steve Jobs and Apple.
The first response sums it up perfectly.
