"Rather than continue the endless revision cycle, Espinosa took a different approach. According to Hertzfeld, Espinosa created a program that exposed every visual parameter of the calculator through pull-down menus: line thickness, button sizes, background patterns, and more. When Jobs sat down with it, he spent about 10 minutes adjusting settings until he found a combination he liked. The approach worked."
"When given direct control over the parameters rather than having to articulate his preferences verbally, Jobs quickly arrived at a design he was satisfied with. Hertzfeld notes that he implemented the calculator's UI a few months later using Jobs' parameter choices from that 10-minute session, while Donn Denman, another member of the Macintosh team, handled the mathematical functions. That 10-minute session produced the calculator design that shipped with the Mac in 1984."
"Espinosa's Construction Set was an early example of what would later become common in software development: visual and parameterized design tools. In 1982, when most computers displayed monochrome text, the idea of letting someone fine-tune visual parameters through interactive controls without programming was fairly forward-thinking. Later, tools like HyperCard would formalize this kind of idea into a complete visual application framework."
Espinosa built a program that exposed every visual parameter of the calculator through pull-down menus, including line thickness, button sizes, and background patterns. Jobs spent about ten minutes adjusting those controls until he found a combination he liked. Hertzfeld implemented the calculator's user interface months later using Jobs' parameter choices while Donn Denman handled the mathematical functions. That configuration shipped with the Macintosh in 1984 and remained virtually unchanged through Mac OS 9 until 2001. Espinosa's Construction Set anticipated later visual, parameterized design tools by letting users fine-tune appearance without programming and bypassing verbal articulation.
Read at Ars Technica
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