Get an idea. Sketch with AI. Make a demo.

It’s hard to go from an idea to a work product worth sharing, much less a finished product. Every step has its difficulties. One of the most challenging is to create the first thing, the initial representation, to collapse the infinite possibilities of inspiration into some real thing you can see and show—and to do this without wasting a lot of time. Make a demo!

I wrote about this concept in my book, Creative Selection.

Making demos is hard. It involves overcoming apprehensions about committing time and effort to an idea that you aren’t sure is right. At Apple, we then had to expose that idea and demo to the scrutiny of sharp-eyed colleagues who were never afraid to level pointed criticism. The psychological hurdle only grows taller with the knowledge that most demos—almost all of them—fail in the absolute, dead-end sense of the word.

This prospect of likely failure can make it tough to sit down, focus, and make a demo at all. Getting another cup of coffee can sound better, especially if a couple colleagues are willing to go along, and then when everybody returns from the communal break, the whiteboard may beckon, and the group might veer off into a gab session.

We didn’t do this on the [original iPhone] project. We rarely had brainstorming sessions. I recall only a few times in my entire Apple career when I stood around to rough out big plans at a whiteboard. Even when it did happen… we chatted, sketched, and came to our decisions as quickly as we could. If brainstorms run longer than an hour or so, or if there are more than a handful of people in attendance, or if they’re a common occurrence, they can devolve into a form of sneaky procrastination. Whiteboard discussions feel like work, but often they’re not, since it’s too difficult to talk productively about ideas in the abstract.

Bridging from an abstract idea to a concrete and specific demo is necessary. If the goal is to produce some particular end product—a website, an app, an open-source project on GitHub—the sooner you can make something that begins to look like that end product, the better.

With AI, turning an abstract idea into a concrete demo has never been easier. Whether it be in imagery, writing, or code, it’s never been easier.

Get an idea. Sketch with AI. Make a demo. What’s your excuse? Get to work! 🧐💡🛠