Over at Business Week, Helen Walters has an interesting summary of a presentation given by Michael Lopp at SXSW on Apple's design process. Lopp is a senior engineering manager at Apple and gives a sneak peek at the process that Apple uses to bring such great products to the market.

Particularly interesting to me is the idea of the paired design meetings. Evidently each team has two design meetings each week. At the first meeting they're invited to "go crazy" and be creative in coming up with unusual ideas and approaches, while at the second meeting they have to get down to brass tacks and figure out how to actually implement some of those crazy ideas. It sounds like a great way to foster creativity, but also to make sure that there's enough practicality that things actually get shipped. In any case, it's worth a read if you're intrigued by the Apple design process.

[via MacVolPlace]