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

Greg had an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of computing, a tinkerer’s knowledge of analog and digital hardware, and a gut feeling for how to create software that made sense to people. A couple years earlier, Greg had given me crucial advice during the development of the iPhone keyboard. At a point when I was desperately stuck, he challenged

Everything counts. No detail is too small.

In any complex effort, communicating a well-articulated vision for what you’re trying to do is the starting point for figuring out how to do it. And though coming up with such a vision is difficult, it’s unquestionably more difficult to complete the entire circuit, to come up with an idea, a plan to realize the idea, and then actualize the plan at

To make products more approachable, designers must lighten the load on people trying to use the things they make. Even small simplifications make a difference. The good news is that I think it’s almost always possible to streamline tasks to make them less taxing. For

Apple didn’t invent direct manipulation—a computer scientist named Ben Shneiderman

Why do some products, like the iPhone, turn out as well as they do? I’m now ready to offer my complete answer. It comes in three parts. The first part is the demo-making creative selection process.

Working at the intersection is not only about honing details so that an individual icon, animation, or sound achieves an aesthetic ideal in isolation. Liberal arts elements and state-of-the-art technology must combine, and the end result can be judged only holistically, by evaluating how the product fits the person.

Bug squashing might help to make a decent product, but it’s not the secret for making a great one.

These problems illustrate a common product development quandary. People who love tech gadgets want new products that do cool new things. This creates the customer demand that gives product developers like me incentive to add new features. Yet none of us wants these products and features to be confusing, to lead us astray, to drive us down a softwar