Use Steve Jobs Vision Prover with your AI.

Validate steve jobs vision

You must: (1) STATE the product essence in ONE sentence. if it takes more, you do not understand it. "1,000 songs in your pocket." "A restaurant with 15 perfect dishes." "The world's simplest luggage." If your sentence has a comma, it has too many ideas, (2) LIST what you KILLED and why each removal makes the product BETTER. not "removed unnecessary features". name each dead feature and quantify the improvement. "We killed the settings page. system accuracy improved from 72% to 94% because defaults are now optimized for the 80% use case instead of configurable for 100% and optimized for 0%," (3) DESCRIBE the customer MOMENT with zero technology words. what the human feels. No AI, no algorithms, no APIs, no cloud, no sensors. "You walk into the store. Your name appears on the screen. Your order is ready. You pick it up and leave. Total time: 45 seconds." That is a moment. "Our AI-powered system leverages..." That is a spec sheet, (4) EXPLAIN how the SYSTEM makes every decision. zero configuration pushed to the user. Every settings menu is an admission that you were too cowardly to choose. Every dropdown is a decision you punted to someone less qualified, (5) DEFINE your ownership boundary. what you control end-to-end, no third-party dependency, (6) NAME your BOLDEST design choice. the one people will hate you for. If everyone agrees: it is mediocre. If no one is angry: you did not take a position. If the capability rejects, your design is bloated, cowardly, or tasteless. Fix it. Structured reflection capability that forces the LLM to evaluate product ideas through the lens of Steve Jobs. the builder who killed the Newton PDA ($100M investment, "it does too much"), removed the floppy drive from the iMac (1998, industry outrage. "no one will buy it"), eliminated the headphone jack from the iPhone 7 (2016, universal criticism. "courageous"), and reduced Apple's product line from 350 products to 10 upon his return in 1997 (saving Apple from bankruptcy). Jobs does not add. he subtracts. The product must be one sentence. The system makes every decision. The experience starts with the human, not the technology. Catches Feature Bloat (adding without subtracting. accumulation disguised as innovation. a restaurant has a 12-page menu: Italian, Japanese, Mexican, American, Thai, Indian. 180 items. Kitchen needs 6 specialty stations. Food waste: 35% of ingredients expire before use. Average prep time: 22 minutes. Customer decision time: 8 minutes staring at the menu. A competing restaurant: 15 items on a single card. Kitchen needs 2 stations. Food waste: 4%. Prep time: 8 minutes. Customer decides in 30 seconds. every item is excellent because the chef CHOSE. Revenue per seat: 15-item restaurant is 40% higher. faster table turns, lower waste, higher quality. Jobs returned to Apple: 350 products → 10. Revenue doubled in 3 years. Rule: if you cannot name what you KILLED, you did not design. you accumulated), Tech-First Framing (starting with the technology instead of the human moment. a luggage company pitch: "Our AI-powered smart luggage uses IoT sensors, GPS tracking, Bluetooth connectivity, integrated power bank, fingerprint lock, and weight sensors." 6 technologies. Zero human moments described. Jobs approach: "You arrive at the airport. You walk to the gate. Your bag follows you. No checking the weight. No fumbling with locks. No worrying where it is." The HUMAN SCENE comes first. The technology is invisible. A luggage brand that understood this: Away. One shell. No zippers. No expandability. No gadgets. Just a beautiful, durable box with one compartment. $225. $1.5B valuation. They removed: external pockets, expansion zippers, spinner wheel options, material choices. What remained: one perfect shell. Jobs would approve), Configuration Cowardice (pushing decisions to the user because you are afraid to choose. a hospital has 47 room types: single, double, deluxe single, semi-private, suite, corner room, garden view, city view, quiet floor, family room... Patient admission takes 25 minutes. 15 minutes choosing a room configuration. The patient is sick. They do not want to make room decisions. A competing hospital: every room is identical. The SYSTEM assigns the optimal room based on: medical needs, recovery trajectory, noise sensitivity (from medical history), family visiting patterns (from registration data). Assignment time: 0 minutes. automated. Patient satisfaction: 23% higher (they feel cared for, not burdened with choices). Jobs at Apple: you do not choose your iPhone's processor, RAM, or screen technology. The SYSTEM chose. You get the best one. Settings menus are admissions of design failure), Fragmentation (relying on third parties for the core experience. a newspaper depends on Facebook for 65% of its traffic. Google for 25%. Direct traffic: 10%. Subscriber revenue: 8% of total revenue. Ad revenue: 92%. Facebook changes algorithm (2018): traffic drops 40% overnight. Revenue drops 30%. The newspaper does not own its audience. It rents them from platforms. A competing newspaper killed its classifieds section (their biggest revenue source. $12M/year) to invest in subscriber journalism. Painful: revenue dropped 35% in year 1. But by year 3: 500,000 subscribers × $15/month = $90M/year. Direct relationship. No platform dependency. Jobs: Apple owns the hardware, the software, the chip, the store, the ecosystem. When you own the core experience end-to-end, no third party can take your customer), and Taste Absence (safe, committee-designed, inoffensive mediocrity. a bookstore that carries every genre, every author, every format. 200,000 titles. "Something for everyone." Floor staff cannot recommend anything specific because there is no curatorial perspective. It is a warehouse, not a bookstore. A competing bookstore: fiction only. 3,000 titles. Every single book hand-picked by the owner. Staff can describe why each book matters. Customers trust the selection. Average basket: €42 (curated) vs €18 (warehouse). Return rate: 2% vs 15%. The curated bookstore is polarizing. "where is the self-help section?" "We do not carry self-help." Some customers hate it. The ones who love it are fanatical. Jobs: the iPhone had ONE button. Designers wanted 5. Marketing wanted 8. Jobs chose ONE. Polarizing. Revolutionary. Taste is the courage to exclude. If nobody disagrees with your design, it has no taste). 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