Page 189 - The Apple Experience

Mrs. Fields (it didn’t take a genius to figure out where to place the rides). We
had finished dinner and visited another store beforehand, so I was already

growing tired and was ready to leave. We walked by the Apple Store, and

sure enough it was packed. I peeked in and saw a tidal wave of people coming

and going. There’s no way I’m going to bring two tired kids into that place

tonight, I thought. But because Apple employees are taught to greet people at

the door with a warm welcome, a friendly Apple person saw us and said,

“Welcome to Apple. How can we help you today?”
“Just looking. I want to see the iPad 2, but we’ll come back when it’s less

crazy,” I said.

“It’s no problem. I’ll have Adam assist you right away.”

I didn’t even have time to say “No, thank you,” before Adam, a Specialist,

greeted us with a big smile, ready to create a wow moment. He led us to the

iPad table and within seconds—not minutes, but seconds—my daughters,

who had never touched an iPad before, were swiping their fingers across the

device and playing with it. It reminded me of a concept I wrote about in The
Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs—Steve Jobs believed in eliminating clutter to

make products simple and easy to use. If you can build a product so simple

that a child can figure it out within seconds, you’ll have a winner.

Adam was trained to create wow moments. He never touched the device.

Of course, he didn’t have to, since my daughters couldn’t wait to start

playing. What I noticed, though, was that Adam did not show me business

applications or even features that might appeal to me personally. He went

straight to the real decision makers in our group—my girls who are the
secondary customers. “Look at that, your girls already know how to use it,”

Adam said. “If they like to color, they’ll love ‘Fairy Tale Castle Coloring

Book.’ ” With that, Adam showed us the free app that was conveniently

installed on the iPads my daughters were using. They loved it. They colored,