What design excellent really means

In an earlier posting on the end of Jobs era at Apple, I mentioned that part of the genius of their products was due to the Sir Jonathan Ive. Now Ive has given a long interview with the Evening Standard of London. Lots of interesting tidbits. One I particularly liked was this:

We struggle with the right words to describe the design process at Apple, but it is very much about designing and prototyping and making. When you separate those, I think the final result suffers.

Interesting comment since Apple doesn’t actually make their own products anymore.
Over at Forbes, Lim Yung-Hui has distilled the content down to 7 Lessons That Startups Can Learn From Apple Design Guru Jonathan Ive:
1. Build A Genuinely Better Product: Different does not necessary means better.
2. Make It Simplistically Useful
3. Design Tells Users How Much You Care
4. Be Inspired by Problems and Opportunities
5. Non-Design Skills Required Too
6. Focus Group is Not Quintessential
7. Promote cross-pollination within your organization
Frankly, I think #1 and #2 says it all. Build a better, more useful product. That is what design should be about and is ultimate goal of innovation. As Ive says in the interview:

Our goals are very simple – to design and make better products. If we can’t make something that is better, we won’t do it.

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