Insight into Apple's Design Process

MacRumors · Mar 13, 2008

As noted by Arstechnica, a Businessweek article reports on an interesting presentation at the SXSW conference by Apple senior engineering manager Michael Lopp. He describes Apple's design approach in coming up with their products:

Pixel Perfect Mockups - While it adds time upfront, it "removes all ambiguity" and the need to correct mistakes later down the line.

10 to 3 to 1 - Designers mock up 10 different unrestricted designs for a given feature. From these, 3 are chosen for further development until a final one is chosen.

Paired Design Meetings - Two meetings. One is for free thinking ("go crazy") without worries about any technical constraints, while the other meeting addresses implementation and practical considerations. Both of these meetings continue throughout product development.

Article Link

echoout · Mar 13, 2008

This is how development works at every company I've ever worked at or freelanced with. Pretty standard.

Popeye206 · Mar 13, 2008

They forgot the part where Steve comes in and says "Wow... I like this one!".

Someone said this is pretty standard... It is to a point... from what I see here Apple seems to take conceptual design much more seriously than others. This seems to lead to more innovation. Most companies I've worked at (and I've been with some of the bigger players in the past) there is too much of engineering keeping the reins on the design process. This builds too many fences and keeps innovation low.

Either way... it seems to work!

jakealdred · Mar 13, 2008

haha go crazy
go :apple:

i wish my school meeting's were lark that

-jake

arkitect · Mar 13, 2008

echoout said:
This is how development works at every company I've ever worked at or freelanced with. Pretty standard.

True as described in the article there is not much different from bog standard design/development.
The "Paired Design meetings" might be slightly less industry standard.

johnnyjibbs · Mar 13, 2008

I don't think it is particularly standard. Otherwise, Apple would be lost among the myriad of companies out there creating innovative products

I do think that Apple has got many things right as they keep delivering and everyone tends to follow. The fact that PCs in general a little nicer to the eye, and the various features in the gadget marketplace... many of these things are copies/evolutions from Apple's products.

Although I can imagine Steve walking in, liking something, and then everyone dropping everything to get that thing made no matter anyone else's opionion...

I think possibly the MacBook Air and the new folder icons in Leopard fall into this category.

tveric · Mar 13, 2008

I saw this article last week, on the Who-gives-a-#&*% channel.

HaGG · Mar 13, 2008

Looks like a nice approach, it definitely works for them.

TheSpecialist · Mar 13, 2008

I indeed find it interesting how Apple designs it products, from concept to manufacturing, the time it takes and the many designs. And the final one Steve chooses hehe.

arkitect · Mar 13, 2008

johnnyjibbs said:
I don't think it is particularly standard. Otherwise, Apple would be lost among the myriad of companies out there creating innovative products

The process is very much standard up to the point you describe below:

johnnyjibbs said:
Although I can imagine Steve walking in, liking something, and then everyone dropping everything to get that thing made no matter anyone else's opionion...

xelterran · Mar 13, 2008

im stealing this

dizastor · Mar 13, 2008

Apple sounds like a fun place to be a designer... well, except for that 10 ideas without boundaries thing.

No boundaries, makes it harder... seriously.

Popeye206 · Mar 13, 2008

tveric said:
I saw this article last week, on the Who-gives-a-#&*% channel.

Hummm..... I would think anyone in software and hardware design would give a #*!& ! Lets face it... Apple has proven they are leading the way in innovative designs. I would think any other company would be foolish not to study and learn how they do it.

tgildred · Mar 13, 2008

Popeye206 said:
They forgot the part where Steve comes in and says "Wow... I like this one!".

More likely, "this is absolute crap! You're fired! Start over!"

mainstreetmark · Mar 13, 2008

tveric said:
I saw this article last week, on the Who-gives-a-#&*% channel.

To answer, I do. It is always an interesting read to see how others are able to successfully bring concepts to production, or perhaps more interestingly, wild ideas into concepts.

So, thank you for sharing your viewing habits and contributing.

yoman · Mar 13, 2008

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)

it would be interesting to sit in on one of those crazy "out there" meetings.

BornAgainMac · Mar 13, 2008

echoout said:
This is how development works at every company I've ever worked at or freelanced with. Pretty standard.

I suppose not at Microsoft with the Zune.

tgildred · Mar 13, 2008

tveric said:
I saw this article last week, on the Who-gives-a-#&*% channel.

Man, there's a channel for everything....

David G. · Mar 13, 2008

tgildred said:
More likely, "this is absolute crap! You're fired! Start over!"

Nah, it goes down like this, "You've baked a really lovely cake, but then you've used dog **** for frosting." After that, then he starts firing people.

bogg · Mar 13, 2008

I seem to remember AMD does the same for their cpus

Their engineers get to do one CPU design each (or rather, per team), and then they take the best ideas from all of those and does a new batch. And after a while they finally come up with a final design.

twoodcc · Mar 13, 2008

pretty interesting. i'm not really surprised by any of this either

RichardI · Mar 13, 2008

Very (Arte Johnson

) interesting.
I have never worked anywhere that put that much emphasis on aesthetics.
But the real key is in which one of the 10 they choose, isn't it?

Rich

Antares · Mar 13, 2008

Ha ha...I can imagine Steve walking into one of those meetings and saying "hmm...that one!"

IJ Reilly · Mar 13, 2008

BornAgainMac said:
I suppose not at Microsoft with the Zune.

Well I don't know, they really went crazy with that product.

Rocketman · Mar 13, 2008

While a lot of companies use a similar filtering approach, few combine that with a benevolent dictator management style. Those that do, such as for example Lockheed Skunk Works, have a tendency of releasing products years ahead of the industry. The industry mean time has to get a product approved by committee with all the political limitations and fears of only proceeding on partially or fully proven and vetted designs. Another artifact of decision by committee is there is a morph away from customer or vision directed approaches and toward politically and financially and manufacturing viable ones. Vanilla.

Rocketman

Insight into Apple's Design Process

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