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

by Ken Kocienda

Steve used demo reviews to judge for himself whether features met this basic usability standard. When he gave me the specific feedback to remove one of the two keyboards from my iPad demo, it had a cascade effect toward greater simplicity. It meant we could also take out the Bas zoom animation. We could also take away the zoom button. We could also take away possible confusion about which keyboard to show in different situations. For example, should the software remember that you used the bigger-keys keyboard in the Notes app and the more-keys keyboard in Mail, and should these keyboard choices be restored in some situations but not in others? These questions became moot, and that’s good, because they don’t necessarily have easy answers. Steve figured that the best way to answer difficult questions like these was to avoid the need to ask them.