Steve Jobs was a tweaker, Malcolm Gladwell writes in a New Yorker book review of the Walter Isaacson Jobs biography where he thoughtfully dissects "the real genius of Steve Jobs". Gladwell concludes that tweakers who perfect inventions often bring about more progress than the original inventors:
"Jobs’s sensibility was editorial, not inventive. His gift lay in taking what was in front of him—the tablet with stylus—and ruthlessly refining it." wrote Gladwell.
One of the more obscure observations that Gladwell pulls from Isaason's book focuses on the final days Jobs spent in the hospital at the end of his life. A destination that did not stunt his obsession with editorial on design, specifically aimed at the hospital's oxygen masks.
As the story goes, Jobs runs through sixty-seven nurses before he selects three he likes. But that's just one of the things he obsessed over. “At one point, the pulmonologist tried to put a mask over his face when he was deeply sedated,” Isaacson writes:
"Jobs ripped it off and mumbled that he hated the design and refused to wear it. Though barely able to speak, he ordered them to bring five different options for the mask and he would pick a design he liked. He also hated the oxygen monitor they put on his finger. He told them it was ugly and too complex."
Although we don't learn which mask Jobs ultimately picked as the design he would wear, it goes without saying that hospital staffers must know what oxygen mask was deemed worthy of a Jobsian redesign.
It's possible that a standard hospital utility item could have gotten an unplanned updating had Mr. Jobs survived, seeing the need for a more user-freindly pulmonary mask used by patients requiring critical care. It's also apparent that the oxygen monitor may have been next on his list.
But first... Say hello to iMask.
That sounds insane, right? But before you dismiss my far reaching observation as pure rubbish, be certain that if a poorly designed oxygen mask did not get past the eye of a tweaker like Steve Jobs, even while under sedation, it's more than likely that a real market opportunity may exist for a ruthless refining of it. In fact, I'm convinced there is.
[The New Yorker - The Real Genius of Steve Jobs]
Comments