Speed The last attribute was that it had to be fast. Jeff realized that he was competing with paper, not computers, as he was trying to get people to replace their paper systems, not their digital systems. He used the metric that you had to be able to do things just as fast with the new design as if you were using a paper-based personal organizer. This was a difficult challenge as the price point meant that they could not put a fast processor in the first version of the product. Jeff talks about the implications: The software guys came back and said, “We can’t do all that stuff you want to do in software with that slow a processor.” I said, “Sure you can, because when we were at GRiD, we had a more sophisticated operating system which ran on a slower processor, and it was fast. So, if we could do it back then, we can do it now.” Sure enough, they were able to do it. They made a product that was very fast. One of my design goals was that there would be no “wait cursors.” I said, “Why should there be wait cursors? That’s a mistake. We don’t want those. That’s a crutch for a bad design. Ban them!” I also insisted that we would have no error dialogues, especially the ones that ask a question of the user, where the user has no choice, like, “You have an error in the fla-fla-flop file, what do you want to do? Continue or abort?” Why ask the user a question like that? Just do something, don’t even ask them.
Those four design criteria solved a lot of the problems that were prevalent on personal computers and PDAs at the time, and turned out to be a defining formula for success.
From the Desk to the Palm |
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