by Jason Snell
Tony Fadell: The storytelling of Steve Jobs
Tony Fadell, Nest founder and a key to creating the iPod, has a new book out and Fast Company has a very interesting excerpt in which he details what he learned from Steve Jobs about communicating tech products to consumers:
He used a technique I later came to call the virus of doubt. It’s a way to get into people’s heads, remind them about a daily frustration, get them annoyed about it all over again. If you can infect them with the virus of doubt—”Maybe my experience isn’t as good as I thought, maybe it could be better”—then you prime them for your solution. You get them angry about how it works now so they can get excited about a new way of doing things.
Steve was a master of this. Before he told you what a product did, he always took the time to explain why you needed it. And he made it all look so natural, so easy.
There are a lot of things Steve Jobs probably gets a little too much credit for. Being a master communicator is not one of them, but he really was one.