This is straight from Jobs’ mouth: We do no market research. They scoff at the notion of target markets, and they don’t conduct focus groups. Why? Because everything Apple designs is based on Jobs’ and his team’s perceptions of what they think is cool.
Of all the items cited in this fine piece, this is the most important: true creativity is the product of a creator's vision and not of consensus. This holds true in all fields and in all times, in my view. Consensus aims for the average or the expected; creative genius will always strive for more.
That said, it is quite risky for an average company to defy conventional conceptions of target markets and the like in building on their vision. It is only the very exceptional company that can do this successfully.
Along the same lines, Donald Norman (usability guru, started the usability field almost single-handedly with the book "The Design of Everyday Things") recently said:
"I've come to a disconcerting conclusion: design research is great when it comes to improving existing product categories but essentially useless when it comes to new, innovative breakthroughs."
http://jnd.org/dn.mss/technology_first_needs_last.html
You can't ignore customers completely. Apple discovered this with the Lisa computer in the 1980s, which apparently was amazing for its time, but at $10,000 found no market. Perhaps Lisa was the computer Jobs wanted for himself, but it turned out that few others were willing to shell out that kind of money.
On the other hand, it is clearly pointless to ask consumers how to design attractive or revolutionary hardware or software - you're the expert, you figure it out.
But this doesn't necessarily mean that you ignore target markets altogether - the iPad is innovative, but still clearly focused on a particular set of use cases with a price to make it competitive with netbooks.
Okay, he said it, but is it true ? A large part of Apple's image is giving the impression that they're not like other computer manufacturers, that they're in a league of their own.
10-3-1 is an interesting technique, if you can afford it. It seems like a much better approach than iterating on a single design because iterating means you are slowly evolving from one design to the next. But having 10 different designs to cull from would provide a much broader range.
I think the key, though, is owning the entire system, hardware and software. They can integrate everything with their eye for detail and no other vendor can sully it with corner-cutting.
Of all the items cited in this fine piece, this is the most important: true creativity is the product of a creator's vision and not of consensus. This holds true in all fields and in all times, in my view. Consensus aims for the average or the expected; creative genius will always strive for more.
That said, it is quite risky for an average company to defy conventional conceptions of target markets and the like in building on their vision. It is only the very exceptional company that can do this successfully.