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book2018

Creative Selection

Disciplines:
software engineering
apple
product design/product development
design process

Summary

Ken Kocienda's 2018 account of his 15 years as a software engineer at Apple — developing the iPhone keyboard and Safari browser — which provides the most specific and credible description of Apple's demo-driven product development process from the inside.

Core Contribution

Reveals the specific mechanism behind Apple's product quality: the demo culture — every idea must be made tangible and shown to leaders at regular reviews — which creates a bias toward concrete progress over abstract discussion, and which Steve Jobs used to maintain personal oversight of hundreds of simultaneous product decisions.

Historical Influences

Ken Kocienda

Intellectual Lineage

Apple Product DevelopmentSoftware Engineering Culture

Allied Works

Steve Jobs Jony Ive In the Plex

Contemporaries & Peers

Jony Ive profile booksSteve Jobs Becoming Steve Jobs

Minds Influenced

Founders podcast Apple content Product development methodology discourse

Intellectual Posterity

Creative Selection Demo culture

Discussing

Creative Selection

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