Book review: Creative Selection

Just finished listening to Creative Selection by Ken Kocienda. It’s a rare look behind the scenes at Apple — how they design products and the amount of work that goes into software we now take for granted, like the iOS keyboard. I normally take weeks or months to finish a book; I got through this one in a few days.

A few things that stuck with me, in my own words:

Show, don’t tell. Rather than endlessly discussing ideas in the abstract, Apple engineers build prototypes and demo them to each other and to decision makers.

The best ideas win. There’s no place for ego when building great products. The book mentions multiple occasions where Steve Jobs, without hesitation, bins his own idea in favor of a clearly better one.

Iteration is the name of the game. Kocienda gives countless examples of how a prototype starts as an okay solution and step by step gets better through experimentation, real-life usage, and continued improvement. The product Apple ships is more akin to a v5.0 than a v1.0.

Hack together a first prototype ASAP. Apple’s first prototypes were often quick hacks that showed the potential of what the real product could become. They inspire, and they give you something tangible to work with. Start small.

There’s a lot more in the book — these are just the bits that resonated most with me as an indie maker.