A sneak peak at Apple's design process 14 Mar 2008

BusinessWeek reports on an interesting presentation delivered at SXSW by Michael Lopp, Senior Engineering Manager at Apple. Lopp attempted to explain why Apple "gets" design while so many other companies try and fail, and in doing so, described a few key principles/activities that are built into its projects. Here's the one we like best:

"10 to 3 to 1: Apple designers come up with 10 entirely different mock ups of any new feature. Not, Lopp said, 'seven in order to make three look good', which seems to be a fairly standard practice elsewhere. They'll take ten, and give themselves room to design without restriction. Later they whittle that number to three, spend more months on those three and then finally end up with one strong decision."