Aparna Chennapragada
Demos Before Memos
Inspired by Aparna Chennapragada episode
Aparna Chennapragada's "demos before memos" approach to product development is exactly how toddlers learn everything.
Aparna says if you're not prototyping and building to see what you want to build, you're doing it wrong. Demos before memos. Show, don't tell.
Your toddler already knows this. You can explain how a zipper works for ten minutes—the teeth, the slider, the physics of interlocking metal—and they'll just blink at you like you're describing tax law. Or you demo it three times, hand it over, and suddenly they're zipping everything in the house including the dog.
Stop lecturing and start demonstrating. How to pour milk without creating a dairy crime scene? Demo it slowly, hand them the cup, accept your fate. How to put on shoes? Demo it once on their feet, then watch them attempt it 47 times with the left shoe on the right foot. They don't learn from your TED talk about shoelaces. They learn from catastrophic failure, again and again, while you stand there wondering if this is what they mean by "iterative development."
This is slower now, faster later, and you'll stop wasting breath on explanations that mean nothing to someone who learns exclusively through chaos.
