In the September issue of Men’s Vogue, writer Michael Specter says of the iPhone, and Apple’s emphasis on design: “You can count on one hand the number of American corporations that take design seriously. There is target and Knoll, and then there is Apple…People want to make phone calls, but they also want to play with their music and look at pretty pictures. They want to have fun. Apple has shown it is possible. More than that, they have reminded us that elegance matters.”

Earlier in the piece, he says, “It is hard to make something simple.” Indeed. It is hard because most people think about design last – after the engineering, after the feature lists, and after trying to include enough to theoretically please everybody. What gets lost in the shuffle is careful thought about and attention to how things should work together, how they should feel to the person who uses them everyday, and gets to be intimately familiar with their functions, and shortcomings. “People aren’t looking for the interface to be exciting. They’re looking to it to be fast, reliable, and easy to use.” Jim Buckmaster, Craigslist CEO

For technology tools, creating buzz about something is easy, but creating something that generates its own buzz, and keeps that buzz going because people are genuinely excited about it, is a bit harder. In the long run, though, it’s the latter group that are the real game changers. This excerpt from an article about the iPhone helps explain why:
“That love-hate relationship we have with cell phones underlies the depth of our involvement with technology itself. Our everyday tools are the stuff of 1950s science-fiction novels. But though the digital age has widely expanded our abilities, the difficulty of accomplishing these tasks with ease often leaves us frustrated. When something comes along that promises to fulfill our ambitions, we pay attention. And when that something also promises to perform its duties with beauty and pizzazz—Apple’s trademarks—we get a visceral buzz that’s as much artistic enthusiasm as consumerism.” Why We Went Nuts About the iPhone, Steven Levy

The reason that people who use wikis become extremely passionate advocates – like Apple fans – and stoke successful grassroots growth in organizations is that they’re simple and understandable. People get how to use them very quickly, and genuinely like that they don’t have to fight with the wiki to do what they want. So wikis get used during projects (instead of after the fact), and the more they get used, the more their use grows because they become hubs for knowledge, interaction, and collaboration. An elegant experience goes a long way in making this possible.