Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs

by Ken Kocienda

“When a task cannot be partitioned because of sequential constraints, the application of more effort has no effect on the schedule. The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned.”10

In the same way, software demos need to be convincing enough to explore an idea, to communicate a step toward making a product, even though the demo is not the product itself. Like the movie, demos should be specifically choreographed, so it’s clear what must be included and what can be left out. Those things that aren’t the main focus of a demo, but are required to create the proper setting, must be realized at the correct level of detail so they contribute to the whole rather than detract from the vision.

When I make a demo, I think about the intended audience, and I make a specific decision about what features to include. I draw a conceptual ring around those key details, and I use a thick imaginary marker to do it. The demo points inside the ring are the focus, and like the lamppost in the movie scene, I depict them with the highest fidelity. I leave outside the ring other less important details that will eventually have to be addressed, but not immediately. I pay them as little attention as possible. Like the inside of the hat shop, I omit them from the demo if I can get away with it. I take extra care at the boundary. Some elements are right on the thick imaginary line, details that need some attention, since they help to set the scene and get my audience to suspend their disbelief.

Over time, Don and I began to understand and absorb the model Richard showed us. Look for ways to make quick progress. Watch for project stalls that might indicate a lack of potential. Cut corners to skip unnecessary effort. Remove distractions to focus attention where it needs to be. Start approximating your end goal as soon as possible. Maximize the impact of your most difficult effort. Combine inspiration, decisiveness, and craft to make demos.

a significant part of attaining excellence in any field is closing the gap between the accidental and intentional,

to achieve not just a something or even an everything but a specific and well-chosen thing, to take words and turn them into a vision, and then use the vision to spur the actions that create the results.

What is good taste? I have my own opinion, which I’ll share shortly, but I also realize I’m not the first to consider the topic. Immanuel Kant himself wrote at length about taste, yet his Critique of Judgement isn’t exactly a handbook for product design.

“The judgement of taste itself does not postulate the agreement of everyone (for that can only be done by a logically universal judgement because it can adduce reasons); it only imputes this agreement to every one, as a case of the rule in respect of which it expects, not confirmation by concepts, but assent from others.”6

Taste is developing a refined sense of judgment and finding the balance that produces a pleasing and integrated whole.

Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it [a product] looks like. People think it’s this veneer—that the designers are handed this box and told, “Make it look good!” That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generations of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis . . . that all things are made of atoms . . . In that one sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.8

Design is how it works.

Without a person at (or near) the helm who thoroughly understands the principles and elements of Design, a company eventually runs out of reasons for design decisions . . . Without conviction, doubt creeps in. Instincts fail . . . When a company is filled with engineers, it turns to engineering to solve problems. Reduce each decision to a simple logic problem. Remove all subjectivity and just look at the data. Data in your favor? Ok, launch it. Data shows negative effects? Back to the drawing board. And that data eventually becomes a crutch for every decision . . . Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better.

I’ve given a name to this continuing progression of demo -> feedback -> next demo: creative selection.

The reason that Apple is able to create products like the iPad is because we’ve always tried to be at the intersection of technology and liberal arts, to be able to get the best of both, to make extremely advanced products from a technology point of view, but also have them be intuitive, easy to use, fun to use, so that they really fit the users. The users don’t have to come to them, they come to the user.2

I wanted the iPhone keyboard click to evoke the clack of a typewriter key striking a page and ultimately achieved this by striking my pencil on the edge of my desk.

The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information, published by George A. Miller of Harvard University in 1956.6

since the etymological root of “heuristic” is eureka, which (of course) comes from the Greek and means “to find.” This is where that word, “eureka,” actually figured into our development process, since good heuristics don’t come in brilliant flashes,

At the same time, we weren’t overly touchy-feely about everything. Creating optimized algorithms was a significant part of developing the software for the iPhone, as it was for making Safari before it. What was important was that there remained a tension and flow between the algorithms and heuristics—making the correct choices to lean toward technology or liberal arts could be complicated.

Inspiration, which means thinking big ideas and imagining about what might be possible, as when Imran saw how smooth finger tracking would be the key to people connecting to iPhone experiences through touch

Collaboration, which means working together well with other people and seeking to combine your complementary strengths, as when Darin and Trey helped me make the insertion point move correctly in WebKit word processing

Craft, which means applying skill to achieve high-quality results and always striving to do better, as when the Safari team made the web browser faster and faster by running the Pa...

Diligence, which means doing the necessary grunt work and never resorting to shortcuts or half measures, as when we persisted through the tedium of fixing cross-references to get Safari to build in the lead-up to the Black Slab Encounter

Decisiveness, which means making tough choices and refusing to delay or procrastinate, as when Steve Jobs made me pick the better keyboard layout for the iPad on the spot while he waited rather than just offering the two different designs Bas and I developed

Taste, which means developing a refined sense of judgment and finding the balance that produces a pleasing and integrated whole, as when we made the choice to o...

Empathy, which means trying to see the world from other people’s perspect...

a combination of people and commitment.

A small group of people built a work culture based on applying the seven essential elements through an ongoing process of creative selection.

A small group of passionate, talented, imaginative, ingenious, ever-curious people built a work culture based on applying their inspiration and collaboration with diligence, craft, decisiveness, taste, and empathy and, through a lengthy progression of demo-feedback sessions, repeatedly tuned and optimized heuristics and algorithms, persisted through doubts and setbacks, selected the most promising bits of progress at every step, all with the goal of creating the best products possible.