海角大神

My fingers hovered over the smooth keys of my paper-thin MacBook Air as I read the first notice of Steve Jobs鈥檚 death Wednesday evening. A second later, my iPhone and iPad lit up like fireflies. As I sat there, staring at the three shiny screens in front of me, my heart instantly ached over the passing of a man I had never met, but I felt knew me.

Many people communicate last wishes about their funerals, but perhaps no person in history has ever shaped the actual death announcement so definitively. Synced across our electronic devices, the moment was beautifully curated, as if Jobs had been designing it, even unintentionally, for years.

To Jobs, design was never for its own sake, and instead a means to something greater 鈥� the shaping of experiences. Aside from the innumerable accolades of Apple鈥檚 brilliant CEO as an innovator, a business hero, a visionary, he was also like you and me: a user, a consumer. And from that vantage point, he tuned in to our everyday experiences, helping us orchestrate our complicated lives.

There is no question that Jobs鈥檚 aesthetic innovations will be among his most enduring legacies, but the appearance of Apple products was actually the least of Jobs鈥檚 concerns. 鈥淢ost people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like,鈥� he told The New York Times in 2003. 鈥淧eople think it鈥檚 this veneer, that the designers are handed this box and told, 鈥楳ake it look good!鈥� That鈥檚 not what we think design is. It鈥檚 not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.鈥�

Among countless other companies, fierce competitors like Blackberry, Dell, Google, Microsoft, and Samsung have attempted to adopt Jobs鈥檚 gleaming white, 鈥渓ess is more鈥� approach. They dutifully streamlined and simplified wherever possible, though never with the same degree of success. For Jobs understood that the most worthwhile kind of simplicity wasn鈥檛 the product of simple thinking, but the result of acute observation, audacious demands, and a commitment to excellence at every turn.

As Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, 鈥淚 wouldn鈥檛 give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.鈥�

Jobs reached for the 鈥渟implicity on the other side of complexity.鈥� Our modern lives 鈥� filled with a cacophony of demands, relationships, and news, made pleasurable by music, the capacity to create and communicate 鈥� are inherently complicated.

Jobs understood that, in turn, we needed tools that didn鈥檛 mirror our increasingly complicated lives, but just the opposite 鈥� tools that oriented us, accompanied us, made our lives less heavy to heave around. Within his little black and white boxes we found that our days, our networks, our ideas, were more containable, and at the same time, ever expanding.

Industrial designer Yves B茅har captures Jobs well: 鈥淗e has given a large portion of the population a way to engage in our daily digital culture,鈥� Mr. B茅har wrote yesterday in Forbes. 鈥淭hanks to his tools, we are all a part of an ever-growing creative class.鈥�

Jobs democratized design and technology 鈥� previously viewed as costly luxuries 鈥� across cultures and generations. I can鈥檛 help but think of my mom, a nurse and mother of six from Milwaukee, Wis. Not a day passes without a typed missive, photo, or video captured on and sent from her iPhone to one of us kin, no matter where we are in the world. Apple products have made her feel more connected and more alive than ever 鈥� an artist, a jokester, photographer, videographer.

It鈥檚 done much of the same for my two year-old niece, who has her own, precarious way of holding her mom鈥檚 iPhone with her pudgy little fingers. She lights up, captivated every time the iPhone comes to life.

Jobs was the master of that moment, which he built into a world stage of Apple鈥檚 product unveilings.

鈥淗e always talks about how wonderous it will be to use something, to actually live with it, and hold it in your hands,鈥� wrote Fast Company鈥檚 Cliff Kuang at the time of Jobs鈥檚 resignation in August. 鈥淚f you listen to Steve Jobs鈥檚 presentations over the years, he comes across not as the creator of a product so much as its very first fan 鈥� the first person to digest its possibilities.鈥�

The architect of gorgeous gadgets and intuitive interfaces, Jobs was even more so an anthropologist of the good life. He wanted his designs to transform lives 鈥� how we work, how we learn, how we love, travel, create, communicate, and live. He believed they could.

Ironically, the success of his mission was never so obvious as that fateful moment that his death reverberated across his network of life-altering inventions, and into our hearts.

is editor of and author of 鈥淗e writes and speaks widely on architecture, design, public service, and social justice.