Designer David Kelley discusses close friend and collaborator Steve Jobs in CBS interview
In a one-on-one interview with '60 Minutes', founder of global product design firm IDEO David Kelley discusses a number of high-profile projects including Apple's first mouse, as well as his relationship to Steve Jobs.
Apple's first mouse was designed in collaboration with David Kelley's design firm.
Source: Flickr/Marcin Wichary via Business Insider
Over the 12-minute interview with Charlie Rose, Kelley outlines the philosophy behind "design thinking," an approach based on empathy for the consumer, or figuring out what people want by observing their behavior. Also key to the process is collaboration and brainstorming between a diverse team of workers with wildly varied backgrounds, which includes software engineers to journalists.
In 1978, Kelley's firm was contracted by late Apple cofounder Steve Jobs to come up with the company's first mouse, a single-button trackball design that was both intuitive and simple to operate. The meeting sparked a long relationship between Kelley and Jobs, one that would yield computer designs like the Apple III and the Lisa.
While not the focus of the interview, Jobs was mentioned more than once including a story about Kelley's battle with cancer. As Kelley tells it, when he was diagnosed with throat cancer, Jobs, who was also fighting an ultimately fatal bout with pancreatic cancer, told Kelley to move straight to Western medicine and forego holistic treatments. Jobs was known to have attempted herbal remedies before moving to more conventional cancer treatments.
Kelley's CBS interview is embedded below, with more anecdotes regarding his relationship with Jobs at the 3:00 and 7:30 marks.
Apple's first mouse was designed in collaboration with David Kelley's design firm.
Source: Flickr/Marcin Wichary via Business Insider
Over the 12-minute interview with Charlie Rose, Kelley outlines the philosophy behind "design thinking," an approach based on empathy for the consumer, or figuring out what people want by observing their behavior. Also key to the process is collaboration and brainstorming between a diverse team of workers with wildly varied backgrounds, which includes software engineers to journalists.
In 1978, Kelley's firm was contracted by late Apple cofounder Steve Jobs to come up with the company's first mouse, a single-button trackball design that was both intuitive and simple to operate. The meeting sparked a long relationship between Kelley and Jobs, one that would yield computer designs like the Apple III and the Lisa.
While not the focus of the interview, Jobs was mentioned more than once including a story about Kelley's battle with cancer. As Kelley tells it, when he was diagnosed with throat cancer, Jobs, who was also fighting an ultimately fatal bout with pancreatic cancer, told Kelley to move straight to Western medicine and forego holistic treatments. Jobs was known to have attempted herbal remedies before moving to more conventional cancer treatments.
Kelley's CBS interview is embedded below, with more anecdotes regarding his relationship with Jobs at the 3:00 and 7:30 marks.
Comments
Makes one wonder if Steve would have used western medicine right from the start, maybe he would be alive today? It's always good to hear some one speak so well about Steve. So many non Apple end users out there are very negative on Steve even to this day. They really don't get how large a contribution Steve made to the tech industry. Quite sad.
It's called Ergonomics and/or Human Factors Engineering.
I'm biased as a mechanical engineer with a very diverse education of several minors and computer science to boot, but when I watch this as if it's some ingenious idea It saddens me how myopic most people are to think this is astonishing.
I've never understood how so few people observe and I mean truly observe with the concept of how interaction can be improved in all walks of life.
The school chair with coasters is not an ingenious idea. In fact, it's a bad idea. Kids will move around all over a classroom with coasters. Just what a teacher needss--to herd a bunch of cats.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer
I'm biased as a mechanical engineer with a very diverse education of several minors and computer science to boot, but when I watch this as if it's some ingenious idea It saddens me how myopic most people are to think this is astonishing.
I've never understood how so few people observe and I mean truly observe with the concept of how interaction can be improved in all walks of life.
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Do_It.txt
Cheers
Quote:
Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer
The school chair with coasters is not an ingenious idea. In fact, it's a bad idea. Kids will move around all over a classroom with coasters. Just what a teacher needss--to herd a bunch of cats.
Unfortunately, it is pretty much standard procedure for children to be allowed to sit wherever they want in class now and to change where that is daily if they feel like it.
Even though since this trend started, inattention problems with students have skyrocketed, the teachers somehow haven't noticed the correlation yet.
If you want to get in a good long fight with an Elementary school teacher, put forward the "radical" idea that kids should sit in rows and face forward. You will probably be reported to the local authorities for even suggesting such heresy.
Originally Posted by tylerk36
Makes one wonder if Steve would have used western medicine right from the start, maybe he would be alive today?
Jobs got cancer in his late '20s. His postponing did nothing.
Originally Posted by Gazoobee
Unfortunately, it is pretty much standard procedure for children to be allowed to sit wherever they want in class now and to change where that is daily if they feel like it.
Even though since this trend started, inattention problems with students have skyrocketed, the teachers somehow haven't noticed the correlation yet.
Stop pretending that every teacher at every corporation allows this.
It's not likely to have been that early on:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-27/pancreatic-cancer-growth-rate-may-give-time-for-early-detection.html
"Tissue from seven newly deceased patients showed that cells in the pancreas took at least 10 years to mutate enough to produce the first cancer cells, and seven more years before a tumor could develop and become capable of spreading to other organs. On average, patients died two years after all that, according to a study released today in Nature."
9 years from cancer cells appearing to death. He was diagnosed in 2003 at age 48 so while the mutation could have started in his late 20s, cancer wouldn't have formed until he was around 40. Given the short life expectancy after a tumour shows up, delaying surgery isn't a good idea as the detection of the tumour was likely not immediate. It was only a 9 month delay though and he managed to get another 7 years - enough to be able to see the launch of the iPad.
It's good to see people explicitly focus on the human side of technology and although it is an obvious thing, it is so often overlooked in practise. Companies try to use it as a marketing angle like HP "the computer is personal again" but that's as far as it gets.
Originally Posted by Marvin
9 years from cancer cells appearing to death. He was diagnosed in 2003 at age 48 so while the mutation could have started in his late 20s, cancer wouldn't have formed until he was around 40. Given the short life expectancy after a tumour shows up, delaying surgery isn't a good idea as the detection of the tumour was likely not immediate. It was only a 9 month delay though and he managed to get another 7 years - enough to be able to see the launch of the iPad.
Did you see this when it was posted earlier? What're your thoughts? (sorry, it's long).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
Jobs got cancer in his late '20s. His postponing did nothing.
Nice fragment sentence. I wonder how you changed history on us without even telling every one else the facts? Two sentences that have nothing to do with each other. Is that your way of trying to create an argument that is a total waste of time? Facts are he was diagnosed in 2003, but we BOTH know that now don't we?
Originally Posted by tylerk36
Nice fragment sentence. I wonder how you changed history on us without even telling every one else the facts? Two sentences that have nothing to do with each other. Is that your way of trying to create an argument that is a total waste of time? Facts are he was diagnosed in 2003, but we BOTH know that now don't we?
Neither of those were sentence fragments. The sentences directly relate.
Why should I bother responding to you until you have the comprehension to understand both of those facts? Please come back after watching the video or rereading my post, for heaven's sake!
Or maybe you'll say these sentences are fragments and have nothing to do with each other.
First of all, he has an agenda to backup vegan diets and alternative medicine:
"John A. McDougall, M.D., is an American Irish physician and author whose philosophy is that degenerative disease can be prevented and treated with a plant-based diet of whole, unprocessed, low-fat foods, especially starches such as potatoes, rice, and beans, and which excludes all animal foods and added vegetable oils.
In 1965, at age 18, McDougall suffered a massive stroke which he attributed to his high animal product diet. Since the mid 1970s he has followed mostly a vegan diet after observing that his elderly patients from the Far East, who lived mainly on rice and vegetables, were trim and healthy compared to their offspring tempted by an American diet."
He is using a lot of guesswork to determine the doubling rate of Steve's cancer too. He measures the growth rates of the tumours until he died ignoring that obviously the surgery would have removed most of the tumours - they'd hardly leave knowingly large tumours in there after the surgery. Given that he died two years after the liver transplant in 2009, his cancer had to have a higher growth rate than what this guy suggests.
He also makes claims about Jobs being misdiagnosed earlier in life without seeing any evidence at all - no X-rays, scans or medical records.
He says that due to his guessed growth rates, the cancer couldn't have spread to other areas during the 9 months but that's apparently what the doctors observed. It might just not have shown up but I think you have to give a bit more weight to the judgements of the doctors examining the patient than one pursuing an agenda.
Although Jobs criticised himself for the delay, I would agree with what this guys says that people shouldn't put him down for it. The fact that he is a doctor himself is enough evidence that you can't trust everything doctor's advise. The surgery would carry some amount of risk. If someone suddenly gave me the choice between dying in 2 years or surgery with say a 20% chance of serious complications, I'd probably want to take some time to think it over too.
You certainly couldn't be sure he'd be alive today if he'd opted for surgery a few weeks after the diagnosis.
This doctor's agenda though is to try and suggest that Steve lived longer due to his vegan diet (had a slower cancer growth rate than normal) and that it was the force feeding of meat that worsened his condition. Those kind of baseless conclusions are in no way a positive message to the Jobs family who I'm sure would rather have an honest discourse so that future suffering could be prevented.
Originally Posted by Marvin
He also makes claims about Jobs being misdiagnosed earlier in life without seeing any evidence at all - no X-rays, scans or medical records.
Would it be unreasonable to imagine Steve wouldn't have had any done, given his background and beliefs? I mean standard medical records maybe, but other procedures?
He is using a lot of guesswork to determine the doubling rate of Steve's cancer too. He measures the growth rates of the tumours until he died ignoring that obviously the surgery would have removed most of the tumours - they'd hardly leave knowingly large tumours in there after the surgery.
What about what they saw when he went under for his pancreas? They knew then that it was spreading to his liver. I don't disagree with you about the amount of guesswork he did, though.
You certainly couldn't be sure he'd be alive today if he'd opted for surgery a few weeks after the diagnosis.
This doctor's agenda though is to try and suggest that Steve lived longer due to his vegan diet…
Right, and I don't buy the diet thing for a second, myself.
I doubt it, medical tests aren't the same as invasive surgery. Steve will have a lengthy medical record but this doctor won't have access to them.
They might have assessed the possibility of it going into remission after getting rid of the source - Steve said he was fine after the surgery. I don't think the doctors would have convinced him he was fine if there were still strong signs the cancer would return.
He looked fine at the iPhone launch in 2007 but in late 2008 he started getting sick again. I don't know when he joined the liver donor list but he had to travel somewhere else to get it quicker so I'd say it was quite an agressive rate of growth to go from the 2007 iPhone launch to a liver transplant in 2009.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2065888/Revealed-How-Steve-Jobs-life-saved-liver-taken-car-crash-victim-surgeon-reveals-time-spent-patient.html
"In order to be considered for a liver transplant, patients have to have a 12 to 13 per cent chance of being dead within a year.
It is not simply a matter of how long you have been waiting for a transplant. If a patient becomes sicker then they will be moved up the list.
From what I understand about Steve Jobs, he has a very unusual sort of tumour.
We carry out 180 or more transplants a year. In three years I haven't seen one patient with his condition.
The condition would often be tackled with chemotherapy and surgery. If these failed then a transplant would become one of the options."
When it comes to cancer, you'd have a very hard time pinning down causes or timelines. It might have come from Steve using lead soldering when he was younger but it would be complete guesswork and it wouldn't have formed the cancer anywhere near that time.
The 9 month wait is the important issue and while the timeline could be used to dismiss or enforce the importance of the decision, I think regardles of the timeline, it's wrong to judge someone for making a decision one way or the other when they are faced with a choice between serious amounts of surgery and eventual death. It's rare that cancer just goes away but it does happen:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1310103/Cancer-sufferer-amazes-medics-going-remission-starting-treatment.html
For people to suggest Steve was somehow delusional or whatever for expecting the odds to fall in his favour is a little naive considering this is a guy who co-founded three major (two multi-billion dollar) companies from nothing and managed a company from the verge of bankruptcy to the most valuable company in the world in a few years while introducing multiple products that have changed the face of every computing product we use. When you have that much success, I'm sure a lot of us would assume things would turn out ok.
But there's a group of people who will use anything to try and attack Steve Jobs and this just gets added to the list. Isaccson seems to be happy to propagate this and I think it's disrespectful of him to do that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
It's not likely to have been that early on:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-27/pancreatic-cancer-growth-rate-may-give-time-for-early-detection.html
"Tissue from seven newly deceased patients showed that cells in the pancreas took at least 10 years to mutate enough to produce the first cancer cells, and seven more years before a tumor could develop and become capable of spreading to other organs. On average, patients died two years after all that, according to a study released today in Nature."
9 years from cancer cells appearing to death. He was diagnosed in 2003 at age 48 so while the mutation could have started in his late 20s, cancer wouldn't have formed until he was around 40. Given the short life expectancy after a tumour shows up, delaying surgery isn't a good idea as the detection of the tumour was likely not immediate. It was only a 9 month delay though and he managed to get another 7 years - enough to be able to see the launch of the iPad.
It's good to see people explicitly focus on the human side of technology and although it is an obvious thing, it is so often overlooked in practise. Companies try to use it as a marketing angle like HP "the computer is personal again" but that's as far as it gets.
Steve Jobs had islet cell neuroendocrine tumor, which is different from the pancreatic cancer reported in the Nature paper cited in your Bloomberg article.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
I doubt it, medical tests aren't the same as invasive surgery.
...
When it comes to cancer, you'd have a very hard time pinning down causes or timelines. It might have come from Steve using lead soldering when he was younger but it would be complete guesswork and it wouldn't have formed the cancer anywhere near that time.
...
I think regardles of the timeline, it's wrong to judge someone for making a decision one way or the other when they are faced with a choice between serious amounts of surgery and eventual death.
It's rare that cancer just goes away but it does happen:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1310103/Cancer-sufferer-amazes-medics-going-remission-starting-treatment.html
For people to suggest Steve was somehow delusional or whatever for expecting the odds to fall in his favour is a little naive considering this is a guy who co-founded three major (two multi-billion dollar) companies from nothing and managed a company from the verge of bankruptcy to the most valuable company in the world in a few years while introducing multiple products that have changed the face of every computing product we use. When you have that much success, I'm sure a lot of us would assume things would turn out ok.
But there's a group of people who will use anything to try and attack Steve Jobs and this just gets added to the list. Isaccson seems to be happy to propagate this and I think it's disrespectful of him to do that.
Medical tests, particularly for cancer, are sometimes (even often) invasive surgery, albeit minimally invasive.
With the exception of smoking, asbestos, excessive sunburning and various other clear environmental factors, the most important cause of cancer is genetics.
I agree we should not judge.
It is not rare for cancer to go away - i.e. go into remission (of course, definition of rare is subjective). If you are talking about cancer going away without treatment, that's a different story.
Jobs only co-founded two companies from scratch? Pixar was purchased from Lucas.
Again, I agree that to question Jobs's decision about his own treatment is disrespectful.
Originally Posted by Marvin
They might have assessed the possibility of it going into remission after getting rid of the source - Steve said he was fine after the surgery. I don't think the doctors would have convinced him he was fine if there were still strong signs the cancer would return.
No, I think he would have convinced himself that he was fine, even if they'd told him.
I don't see how they could have told him he was fine if they knew it had spread. If we, regular people who shouldn't have access to this medical knowledge, know that they knew at that time that it had spread, then he knew. And they absolutely would have told him, rather than not.
He looked fine at the iPhone launch in 2007 but in late 2008 he started getting sick again.
Oh, he looked fine from right after the surgery to about 2008. Four years he looked fine, but he obviously wasn't.
I don't know when he joined the liver donor list but he had to travel somewhere else to get it quicker so I'd say it was quite an agressive rate of growth to go from the 2007 iPhone launch to a liver transplant in 2009.
Right, I buy that.
The 9 month wait is the important issue and while the timeline could be used to dismiss or enforce the importance of the decision
Okay, but I don't think it's the only one.
For people to suggest Steve was somehow delusional or whatever for expecting the odds to fall in his favour is a little naive considering this is a guy who co-founded three major (two multi-billion dollar) companies from nothing and managed a company from the verge of bankruptcy to the most valuable company in the world in a few years while introducing multiple products that have changed the face of every computing product we use. When you have that much success, I'm sure a lot of us would assume things would turn out ok.
And there it is again. We can keep saying that he was intelligent enough to know about such and such, and he was, but we know that he didn't do that when it came to himself. He ignored his daughter because he assumed he could. He ignored the cancer after he knew it WAS cancer because he assumed he could.
With his kidney problems earlier in life: why are we not saying that he ignored them (performing stop-gap runs to hospitals) because he assumed he could?
I don't buy this guy's vegan premise for a second, but Steve not going and having the testing he had in 2004 done until he absolutely had to, I buy. And I'm not saying it existed as cancer in his 20s, but it could've been cancer a few years earlier, still this side of the millennium.
Like I say, they might have been hopeful that what remained would have gone into remission after removing the source. I'm sure it would have also had a placebo effect to stay positive and it's not like they wouldn't have run regular tests after the surgery to keep an eye on it.
He gets a lot of critcism for ignoring his daughter but it's easy to condemn people for not stepping up to their responsibility when it's someone else who has to do it. Steve Jobs always appeared to live his life by what he felt was right and he didn't want to spend his life with Chris-Ann Brennan.
The fact is we can do almost anything we want to do. If you want to run into a movie theatre or a nursery or an island and shoot dozens of people, all other people are going to do is clean up the mess - there are no assumptions over those possibilities. What we are talking about are not options but consequences. Could a parent abandoning their child have a positive consequence? If how Steve turned out could be described as positive then yes - I'm not suggesting that it would always be the right thing to do but a family can be just as broken when parents don't want to be together. Could an alternative option to surgery have had a positive consequence? Who knows, the cancer might not have grown very quickly or even receded and avoided potentially harmful surgery.
"Jobs was reported to have a form of pancreatic cancer called a neuroendocrine tumor. This type is less lethal than the most common form of pancreatic cancer, an adenocarcinoma. Neuroendocrine tumors grow more slowly than adenocarcinomas. That means patients don't necessarily have to rush to treatment, said Julie Fleshman, president and chief executive officer of the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network"
"I don't think waiting nine months for surgery was a bad decision," Dr. Maged Rizk, a gastroenterologist at Cleveland Clinic, told WebMD in an interview last week. "Especially if it is limited disease, especially if it is an islet-cell tumor and the cells are [typical of early cancer], and as long as you don’t have symptoms, you can sit on it a bit," Rizk said
http://www.livescience.com/16551-steve-jobs-alternative-medicine-pancreatic-cancer-treatment.html
If they told him it was a type of cancer that was slow growing, there was no delusion in thinking he could have waited. It was obvious it wasn't very slow growing but we can't assume what information he had and what judgement call he made. If he felt he made the wrong choice, that's how it is - it wasn't his fault if it turned out to have grown faster than they anticipated but he can still regret the choice to wait.
Sure it could have spread earlier but only the doctors who treated him know the actual growth rates so if they had told him they observed a rate that suggested the 9 month period could have resulted in it spreading, we can't say otherwise. We certainly can't make assumptions about Steve's personality from the decision.
This is how the media works - they give you a small amount of believable information, attach a bias to it and let people fill in the blanks. It's how all kinds of information gets exchanged really but you have to always avoid fitting information to the conclusion. If the jigsaw piece doesn't fit, reach for another piece, not a hammer. A slow growth rate doesn't fit with what happened to him. It might have been slow enough that the 9 month wait was inconsequential but we really can't say for sure.
Originally Posted by Marvin
He gets a lot of critcism for ignoring his daughter but it's easy to condemn people for not stepping up to their responsibility when it's someone else who has to do it. Steve Jobs always appeared to live his life by what he felt was right and he didn't want to spend his life with Chris-Ann Brennan.
Oh, no! I'm not condemning him for that. I get why he did it; based on where he was in life, he wasn't at all ready.
We certainly can't make assumptions about Steve's personality from the decision.
Yep, not in a vacuum we can't.