"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 ten minutes adjusting settings until he found a combination he liked. The approach worked."
"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 used the tool for about ten minutes, adjusting settings until he found a combination he liked. Those parameter choices became the calculator UI that shipped with the Macintosh in 1984 and remained largely unchanged through Mac OS 9 until 2001. Espinosa's Construction Set anticipated later visual, parameterized design tools and frameworks. The tool demonstrated that giving decision-makers direct manipulation capabilities can bypass verbal communication limits and produce rapid, satisfactory design decisions.
Read at Ars Technica
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