Business Management Life

I was told this story a few years ago by an Apple Computer employee.

When Macintosh computers first came out, Steve Jobs learned a very important lesson in sensible design from a young girl. The girl was the daughter of one of Job’s friends, and Jobs had recently given the girl a brand new Mac. Jobs asked the girl, “So what do you think of your new computer?”

The girl told Jobs that her new computer was the coolest thing in the world. She was delighted by the Mac’s features and capabilities. But when Jobs asked if there was anything she didn’t like about the computer, she said, “Well, there is one thing ..”

“What’s that?” Job asked.

“It stinks.”

“What do you mean it stinks? You mean something about it doesn’t work?”

“No it just stinks”

“Stinks? Like what?”

“Well,” she said, “it smells like a fart.”

Jobs was a little confused. How could a computer smell like a fart?

When Jobs returned to Macintosh, he decided to investigate. Sure enough, he discovered that the production area did smell a lot like a fart - but why?

It turned out that when the engineers took the Macintosh computer from a prototype to production, they made an error in the timing of the curing of the plastics. The computers were built with sulfur-cured plastics, and the plastics weren’t being cured all of the way. The computers were being shipped out to consumers in boxes when the plastics were only about 90% cured, hence the “fart” smell from the residual sulfur.

If Macintosh had considered their computer’s design from the perspective of each sense, they may have thought about and addressed this issue sooner. Luckily for them, one little girl’s keen sense of smell prevented the odor from turning off other prospective buyers.

When I apply sensible design as a brainstorming strategy, everyone in the room is asked to think about the concept from the same perspective at the same time - from the viewpoint of our senses. We think about the concept in relation to each sense, one at a time, and generate four or five hundred new ideas.

When we start talking about how the concept feels, tastes, or smells, people usually look at me like I’m nuts. Things are usually pretty quiet at first, but by the end, almost everyone in the room starts participating and throwing ideas out there.

After we finish brainstorming, we go into our left brain and think about each idea logically. In the end, we usually find that we’ve generated five to ten ideas that could be easily implemented; ideas that we never would have thought of if we hadn’t considered the product from the perspective of each individual sense.

Although the issues and ideas we come up with can be pretty important concepts, addressing the issue or finding a solution is often simple. The biggest obstacle to solving the problem is identifying it in the first place. Many times, no one has ever stopped to consider the product or problem from the perspective of their senses.

Sensible design can solve problems.

Mark L. Fox
http://www.davinciandthe40answers.com
http://www.slyasafox.com
info@slyasafox.com
801-779-0603

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 8:35 am and is filed under Leadership, Management, Hiring, Ideas, Tips, Blog Carnival. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.