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

Inspiration: Thinking big ideas and imagining what might be possible

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 lo

to meld technology and the liberal arts, to take the latest software and hardware advances, mix them with elements of design and culture, and produce features and products that people found useful and meaningful in their everyday lives.

Steve figured that the best way to answer difficult questions like these was to avoid the need to ask them.

But if you’re expecting to read a handbook about the “Seven Elements That Made Apple Great,” I hope you’ll see that working in the Apple style is not a matter of following a checklist.

My friend continued to respect Steve’s taste, even though he deplored his temperament.

In our final design, we made punctuation and numbers available under a separate layout accessible by tapping a .?123 key. We worried there would be howls and complaints about the inconvenience of this arrangement, but it turned out to be one of those things that people adapted to readily and accepted without much fuss.

Demos like this were the foundation of the Apple software development process, as you’ll see in the case of this iPad demo and as I’ll describe in many other demos throughout this book.

Human Interface team,