From “Insanely Simple” by Ken Segall:
You’d think that such a brilliant advertising idea would have been green-lighted from the start. In truth, the campaign had shaky beginnings, as Steve rejected many of Chiat’s scripts over the course of several meetings. Refusing to give up on their idea, the Chiat team decided that the best thing to do was to go out and shoot some real ads using the proposed actors. They spent an intense weekend doing just that and shared the ads with Steve on Monday. Seeing them on the screen instead of on paper, he loved them.
Imagine ‘Iron Man’ without the suit or ‘Avatar’ without Pandora’s breathtaking visuals. It’s like Harry Potter waving a twig instead of a wand – the magic just isn’t there.
In “Getting Real”, DHH and Jason Fried write about the importance of coded prototypes.
Don’t worry about the size of your headline font in week one. You don’t need to nail that perfect shade of green in week two. You don’t need to move that “submit” button three pixels to the right in week three. Just get the stuff on the page for now. Then use it. Make sure it works. Later on you can adjust and perfect it.
Details reveal themselves as you use what you’re building. You’ll see what needs more attention.
You’ll feel what’s missing. You’ll know which potholes to pave over because you’ll keep hitting them. That’s when you need to pay attention, not sooner.
It’s about making it real, tangible, something that pops off the screen and grabs you.
Sometimes you need a New Zealand landscape.
Sometimes Justin Long and John Hodgman will do. (Or whoever the prototype versions of them were.)