SXSW: Blood, Sweat and Fear: Great Design Hurts
March 8th, 2008 | by Brad King |Here is one of the presenters for this panel, which right now isn’t shaping up to be very exciting. Michael Lopp is a Senior Engineering Manager at Apple.
Right now, we’re going through the different words that are within the word design. It’s not a very well prepared opening, that is rambling. And he hasn’t quite figured out how to handle Keynote. What a waste the opening of this panel is. It’s a rambling series of images discussing packages.
Finally, into the issues of design. Here is how Apple designs…
- Design is an unintentional present
- We allow ourselves to screw up, a lot. Fear of Ponies: WYSIWYG, Supports all major browsers, Reflects the spirit of the company
- Fear of Blue: everyone has an opinion about colors, there is no barrier to entry
- Fear of Python: there is a barrier to entry to Python because you have to have some previous knowledge
- “What is wrong with this icon? The answer: Steve Jobs as approved it, so nothing is wrong with it.”
- “What I hear when I hear the last one is “I want a pony.”
The talk is getting better. Now we’re into solutions to that problem.
- We do pixel-perfect mock-ups. If you can’t bother to put the actual content in, you shouldn’t work on design.
- 10 to 3 to 1: 10 versions that are good, iterate them down to 3, iterate down to 1. We have a lot of room to design it.
- Paired Design Meetings: Brainstorm meeting followed by a production meeting
- The Pony Meeting: every 2 weeks, they take the best and brightest ideas and present them to the decision makers.
