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Insight into Apple's Design Process

A couple of these techniques are used in other in industries.

I work for an Events Management company that go through the 'unrestricted ideas' to 'realistic ideas' stage to develop new and innovative event concepts. I seem to think that its called the Disney technique and it has the 'Dreamer' 'Realist' and 'Evaluation' stages.
 
This is a great form of triangulation. Counter-balance between:

1. Complete out of box thinking

2. Bounding by business/technical realities

3. Wireframe down to specifics to sanity check

I think that this process is technically common but in practice, very few companies actually make this work.

From my experience, this occurs either because they come at things from a heavy prototyping culture but struggle with the filter down part of the process; OR, come at things from a 'right answer first' mindset which constrains out of box thinking; OR have a culture that has a disconnect between market-facing requirement dynamics (e.g., customer outcomes/aspirations) and product requirement dynamics (e.g., functional attributes).

The key thing in Apple culture is that this is a perpetual process in product development as opposed to tied to a specific stage so it is an ongoing forcing function. As others state, Apple also has a strong, forceful personality that provides the "INSANELY GREAT" or "TOTAL ****" binary vote.

Mark
 
echoout said:
This is how development works at every company I've ever worked at or freelanced with. Pretty standard.
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No, the standard approach is this:

Quick and dirty mockups (after all, they're just mockups!)

9 to 1 We already know which design we're going to use, but we'll make eight crappy alternatives just to show how much better it is.

Merged Design Meetings Why have two meetings when you can do it all at once?
 
Popeye206 said:
They forgot the part where Steve comes in and says "Wow... I like this one!". :D

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!
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My company justs seems to make everything up as they go along. R&D spends half their time just spinning in circles. I guess that's what you get for $160M a year.
 
tveric said:
I saw this article last week, on the Who-gives-a-#&*% channel.
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Well, obviously you did. As you clicked on the article and took the effort to post. If you really didn't, we wouldn't have a post from you.
 
would love to see the 10 different iPhones that they (Apple) came up with. What fun. Homer: Why don't we just take an existing product and add a clock to it? Doh!
 
mca7 said:
Can someone explain what "Pixel Perfect Mockup" means?
Thanks!
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It's an expression to mean an exact and finished computer rendering as opposed to a rough wireframe sketch. Nothing visual is left to the imagination as the "Pixel Perfect Mockup" should look exactly like the finished product down to the screws.
 
After reading the article (thanks for posting or I would have missed reading it) I have decided that instead of the new improved thinner more powerful MBP that I have been waiting for, I'm going to get an iPony! ;)
 
this is very interesting to me from a textbook standpoint of project management and strategic development.

the clarity of the mockups helps everyone on the team understand visually what they are all referencing in their discussions. classic project management.

with 10 to 3 to 1, they're applying a basic top-down approach to filtering and picking a candidate design solution.

the paired design meetings incorporates a strategic development design methodology of both an autonomous process and an induced structured one in order to push strategic development in generating core competencies. hence, innovation and creativity with functionality isn't stifled along the way to added value.

cool stuff.
 

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Agreed...

arkitect said:
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.
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Pretty standard creative process.

The only thing that differs from studio to studio or company to company etc is quality of ideas.

Also - we probably will never see rejected ideas - because in any good process all ideas are kept in some sort of 'ideas vault'. Rejected concepts and ideas aren't always necessarily 'bad'.
 
That mock-up is actually a slide from the MacWorld '07 Jobsnote. It was shown just before the actual iPhone IIRC.
 
portent said:
No, the standard approach is this:

Quick and dirty mockups (after all, they're just mockups!)

9 to 1 We already know which design we're going to use, but we'll make eight crappy alternatives just to show how much better it is.

Merged Design Meetings Why have two meetings when you can do it all at once?
Click to expand...

Exactly right.

To illustrate what pixel-perfect mock-ups mean, Michael showed a nice image of Panic's Coda in action (it must be pretty sweet for Panic to get this sort of shout-out). But this wasn't the actual app - this was the mock-up Cabel Sasser did before Coda was developed at all. Unless it looks *exactly* like the app will, it's unacceptable at Apple. I've never seen this anywhere else - placeholders, temporary images, and "you get the picture" unfinished designs are how it's typically done.

Apple spends a lot of time perfecting mock-ups for designs which never get off the ground, but they feel that the faster board and user reception is worth it. Decision-makers don't get sidetracked by minutiae - how many times have you been in a design meeting where the boss is going on about the wrong partner logo? You can ask them to imagine the right logo in its place, but it doesn't matter - you shouldn't be having that sort of argument at all.

Another thing Michael pointed out - no Lorem Ipsum is allowed.
 
neven said:
I've never seen this anywhere else - placeholders, temporary images, and "you get the picture" unfinished designs are how it's typically done.
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I work in the industry - and have done for years, and I've seen the same process happen in plenty of places - especially the 'no lorum ipsum' rule as it gives a false impression of final execution. I would question the quality of studios / companies where you've seen this happen on a typical and regular basis.

'You get the picture' only happens internally before presentation - at a pure 'scamp' stage. Good designers follow good rules.
 
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