Level 1 Secrets of Apple's design process
During a presentation at 2008 South by Southwest festival, audience members got a rare glimpse into Apple's design process. The presentation was given by Michael Lopp, senior engineering manager at Apple. According to Lopp, the process involves:
Pixel Perfect Mockups, a.k.a. prototyping. Admitedly this process takes a significant amount of time but it is akin to a magical wand that eliminates ambiguity and removes needs for correcting any mistakes down in the process.
10 to 3 to 1. Apple designers start with ten mockups for any product or feature, with room to design without restriction. They start to apply the various restrictions (design aesthetics, projected pricing, user friendly UI, etc) whittle that number to three, spend more months on those three and then finally end up with one strong design.
