Really great design is hard. Good is the enemy of great. Competent design is not too much of a stretch. But if you are trying to do something new, you have challenges on so many axes.

Very often design is the most immediate way of defining what products become in people's minds.

When you're trying to solve a problem on a new product type, you become completely focused on problems that seem a number of steps removed from the main product. That problem solving can appear a little abstract, and it is easy to lose sight of the product.

With the early prototypes, I held the phone to my ear and my ear [would] dial the number. You have to detect all sorts of ear-shapes and chin shapes, skin colour and hairdo... that was one of just many examples where we really thought, perhaps this isn’t going to work.

Different and new is relatively easy. Doing something thats genuinely better is very hard.

If something is going to be better, it is new, and if it's new you are confronting problems and challenges you don't have references for.

The word design is everything and nothing. The design and the product itself are inseparable.