The Perfect Thing

In order to design, you must conceptualize. This is the first and most important step in the design process. Without a general concept you have nothing. In this article, Steve Jobs conceptualizes a new, easy to use MP3 player that can hold up to a thousand songs and fit in your pocket. Only after the concept of the iPod was established was it ready to be designed. Jobs then brought in Anthony Fadell to create a prototype which would bring this concept to life. After extensive research and experimentation, Fadell developed three prototype designs which were presented to Apple early April. Combining the ideas of Fadell and others, the iPod was on its way to the actual design process. During this process they put the ideas from the prototype together along with innovations to the original idea to create the ideal model.

If I were to evaluate a "perfect thing" a few things that I would take into consideration would be the ease of use, the design, and the functionality. Ease of use is very important because if something is very hard to use it will tend to scare away a large customer base, people like simplicity. The design is also important because no one is going to want to own a product that is not stylish or trendy. However, the functionality is probably the most important aspect of the product because it's all about what the product does and how well it does it. If a product is lacking functionality it can not be "perfect."

I feel that the iPod is a very powerful and useful device. It is a very popular product because it is very easy to use, stylish and trendy, and it does what it is supposed to and it does it well. The iPod has many strengths; however, it does have a few weeknesses as well. The iPod is not very durable and there can be problems with certain iPods.