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

Sometimes there were several rounds of feedback and changes over many weeks before Scott would give the approval to bring the work into Diplomacy.

Once in the review session with Steve, our efforts met with his editing. In our case, Steve saw something he liked, but he found the demo unnecessarily complicated, so he unpacked it. This deconstruction wasn’t typical, but it was completely in character.

As in Diplomacy, the whole software organization kept meetings and teams small to maintain efficiency and to reinforce the principle of doing the most with the least.

I know the demo isn’t an actual product, and my audience knows it too, but creating the illusion of an actual product is essential during the development process to maintain the vision of what we’re actually trying to achieve, and so my colleagues can begin responding and giving feedback as if the demo was the product.

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.

He reasoned these alone would be sufficiently compelling proofs of concept.

Demos were the catalyst for creative decisions, and we found that the sooner we started making creative decisions—whether we should have big keys with easy-to-tap targets or small keys coupled with software assistance—the more time there was to refine and improve those decisions, to backtrack if needed, to forge ahead if possible.

Making demos is hard. It involves overcoming apprehensions about committing time and effort to an idea that you aren’t sure is right. At Apple, we then had to expose that idea and demo to the scrutiny of sharp-eyed colleagues who were never afraid to level pointed criticism.

I began to look at my derby-winning design in a similar way, as if it were a successful audition rather than a sold-out performance.

In the years since Richard showed me his browser demo, I’ve emulated his approach. 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