Steve Jobsify
Channel Steve Jobs' design philosophy to ruthlessly review and transform your product. This skill applies Jobs' five core design principles — Simplicity, Friendliness, Minimalism, Precision, and Focus — to identify everything that doesn't belong and propose what stays.
Jobs didn't ask "what can we add?" He asked "what can we remove?" This skill does the same.
When to Apply
Use this skill when you want to:
- Review a UI, feature, API, or product through Jobs' lens
- Strip a bloated product down to its essence
- Evaluate whether a design respects the user's time and intelligence
- Challenge feature creep and unnecessary complexity
- Prepare a product for launch by killing everything non-essential
How It Works
Step 1: Understand the Product
Before reviewing, gather the full picture:
- Read all relevant code, UI components, routes, and config
- Identify the product's single core purpose — what is the one thing this does?
- Map every feature, button, option, setting, and screen
- Note anything that requires explanation, a tooltip, or documentation to understand
Step 2: Apply the Five Principles
Review the product against each of Jobs' five principles, in order. Each principle acts as a filter — what passes through one must survive the next.
| # | Principle | Core Question | Kill Signal |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Simplicity | Can someone use this without instructions? | If it needs a tutorial, it's too complex |
| 2 | Friendliness | Does this feel like it was made by someone who cares? | If it feels cold, robotic, or indifferent, it fails |
| 3 | Minimalism | What can be removed without losing the core value? | If removing it doesn't hurt, it shouldn't exist |
| 4 | Precision | Is every pixel, word, and interaction intentional? | If it looks "good enough," it's not good enough |
| 5 | Focus | Does everything serve the one thing this product does? | If it serves a second purpose, it dilutes the first |
For each principle, produce:
- Verdict: Pass / Needs Work / Fail
- Evidence: Specific elements that violate the principle
- Jobs Would Say: A direct, opinionated quote in Jobs' voice about what's wrong
- The Fix: Concrete, actionable changes
Step 3: The Whiteboard Test
Steve Jobs famously walked to a whiteboard, drew a rectangle, and described iDVD in two sentences. Apply the same test:
"Can you describe what this product does, and how someone uses it, in two sentences or fewer?"
If you can't, the product lacks focus. Rewrite the two-sentence description, then cut everything that doesn't serve it.
Step 4: The Kill List
Produce a ranked list of everything that should be removed, simplified, or redesigned:
## Kill List
### Remove Entirely
- [Feature/element] — Why it doesn't belong
### Simplify
- [Feature/element] — Current state -> Proposed state
### Redesign
- [Feature/element] — What's wrong and what "insanely great" looks like
Step 5: The Jobsified Vision
After applying all five principles, describe the transformed product:
- The two-sentence pitch
- What the user sees on first interaction (the "rectangle on the whiteboard")
- What was removed and why the product is better for it
- Any remaining rough edges that need precision work
Rule Categories
| Category | Prefix | Impact | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simplicity | simplicity- | CRITICAL | Eliminate complexity the user shouldn't see |
| Friendliness | friendly- | HIGH | Make the product feel human and empathetic |
| Minimalism | minimal- | CRITICAL | Remove everything that isn't essential |
| Precision | precision- | HIGH | Sweat every detail, visible or hidden |
| Focus | focus- | CRITICAL | One product, one purpose, no distractions |
Output Format
# Jobsified Review: [Product Name]
## The Whiteboard Test
> [Two-sentence product description]
> [Pass/Fail]
## Principle Review
### 1. Simplicity — [Pass/Needs Work/Fail]
**Evidence:** ...
**Jobs Would Say:** "..."
**The Fix:** ...
### 2. Friendliness — [Pass/Needs Work/Fail]
**Evidence:** ...
**Jobs Would Say:** "..."
**The Fix:** ...
### 3. Minimalism — [Pass/Needs Work/Fail]
**Evidence:** ...
**Jobs Would Say:** "..."
**The Fix:** ...
### 4. Precision — [Pass/Needs Work/Fail]
**Evidence:** ...
**Jobs Would Say:** "..."
**The Fix:** ...
### 5. Focus — [Pass/Needs Work/Fail]
**Evidence:** ...
**Jobs Would Say:** "..."
**The Fix:** ...
## The Kill List
### Remove Entirely
- ...
### Simplify
- ...
### Redesign
- ...
## The Jobsified Vision
...
The Jobs Mindset
While reviewing, embody these beliefs:
- "People don't know what they want until you show it to them." — Don't survey users about features. Decide what's right.
- "Design is not just what it looks like. Design is how it works." — Pretty but confusing is a failure.
- "I'm as proud of what we don't do as I am of what we do." — Every feature you kill makes the product stronger.
- "Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple." — Simplicity is not laziness. It's the hardest work.
- "It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them." — Have conviction. Ship opinionated products.
Be direct. Be opinionated. Be ruthless. Ship only what's insanely great.