George Gilder Quotes

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.

I love taking an idea... to a prototype and then to a product that millions of people use.

Users think they know what they want, but you get the horseless carriage effect where you're getting asked for a faster horse.

If people keep buying poorly designed products, manufacturers and designers will think they are doing the right thing and continue as usual.

You can't make anything authentic by asking people what they want because they don't know what they want. That's what they're looking at you for.

This is what customers pay us for - to sweat all these details so it's easy and pleasant for them to use our computers. We're supposed to be really good at this. That doesn't mean we don't listen to customers, but it's hard for them to tell you what they want when they've never seen anything remotely like it.

It's incredibly exciting to know people are using and living with the things I create.

The point is that I don't design stuff for myself. I'm a toolmaker. I design things that other people want to use.

I had to learn everything about manufacturing, patents and how to run a business, and eventually I came up with an prototype that worked.

It can't be that difficult to build a great thermostat. So I decided to figure out: What would the thermostat for the iPhone generation look like? I got this bug. It really infected my brain. I kept thinking about it. This could be a cool product that matters and a cool product that has a great business.

Everyone wants an iPhone, but it would be impossible to design an iPhone in China because it's not a product; it's an understanding of human nature.

It was amazing feeling to be able to be involved in invention, but not just invention - the creating of a marketplace that had real value to add.

When I did inventions, I always thought only of the invention itself, but the kids would ask for marketing materials.

I love to see technology from a design perspective and vice versa. I am a 'Desigineer.'

On the day he unveiled the Macintosh, a reporter from Popular Science asked Jobs what type of market research he had done. Jobs responded by scoffing, "Did Alexander Graham Bell do any market research before he invented the telephone?

The iPod is a perfect example of Steve's [Jobs] methodology of starting with the user and looking at the entire end-to-end system.

I think if you are writing something that you are trying to design for someone else to like that is not necessarily you're demographic, it is a much harder road.

Think about the market, think about the design, and think about who is going to design for that market. Hit the mark.

Good products are built by people who want to use it themselves

We must learn what customers really want, not what they say they want or what we think they should want.

Steve Jobs always believed that you didn't want to do focus groups or research and ask people what they wanted. You wanted to create products that they didn't know they wanted yet and they would fall in love with. And I think that was part of the magic of his design philosophy.

People don't know what they want until you show it to them. That's why I never rely on marketing research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.

Anything new and different is most susceptible to market research.

I just want to build great products.

Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it's this veneer - that the designers are handed this box and told, 'Make it look good!' That's not what we think design is. It's not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.