The first recliner was fashioned from a slatted wooden patio chair. Sounds comfy, right? Four years later, the inventors patented a padded model and renamed their company “La-Z-Boy”. (source)
It’s been almost a year since the 2009 Forrester Customer Experience Forum in New York, but I recently found myself reciting something I heard there. In a session called The Future of Online Customer Experience, Forrester VP and Research Director Moira Dorsey claimed:
New technologies [...] start by imitating older technologies before they evolve to their true forms.
Maybe due to the limited foresight of our wee human minds, this process occurs most any time a new technology is designed which serves a function similar to that of something that already exists.
Click through to see captions of each invention.
So what does this mean that we’re doomed to several bad releases before we start getting to the good ones? Not so fast. A carefully planned process can help new designs evolve pre-release, if a few key things are remembered.
First drafts aren’t optional
OR critique begets optimization
Your first design has about the same odds as a high school relationship for standing the test of time. So don’t waste time trying to make it pixel-perfect. Carefully consider whether the best tool for the first round design isn’t a big fat Sharpie or dry erase marker. Force yourself to sketch ideas as quickly and wildly as possible – after all, you have nothing to lose.
Then after a good night’s rest, sit back and take a look at each creation. Show them to your colleagues or better yet, to people who would ultimately use the end product. Understand where and why each design fails them. (See more about rapid prototyping with customers.)
Or, you could just skip this step. And send your first draft out into the market?
Poor (early) designs are not failures
OR turn that frown upside down
In order to make it to “beta”, we humans have to experience “alpha”, understand its shortcomings and only then pick up the Sharpie again.
Unfortunately, putting unpolished, first-draft work out for critique calls for what we Texans like to call juevos. But it shouldn’t be thought of as optional. As ironic as it is, fear of failure causes failure in design.
So today, I conclude with a manifesto. Say it with me: “I know that my first draft is only the beginning, and I will design rapidly and with great abandon because putting a stake in the ground is the best way to get the critiques flowing – from myself, my colleagues, my clients and hopefully potential users of the design.“
See also
Hey Nash. Glad you read this entry bc I was inspired by your “Or” headlines. I’ve read Rework and although there are many ideas I found intriguing, the advice regarding failure just seem pretty counterintuitive to UX design. I think it’s very important to look both at what works (for La-Z-Boy, it was the reclining function) and what doesn’t (argh! these wood slats!). Perhaps the wood slats would have been removed in round 2 without someone filing them in JIRA – maybe one of the cousins would have looked at the other and said, “Boy, I sure love reclining. We could enhance the comfort of reclining if my spine wasn’t digging into the teak.” Who knows.
I guess my key assertion is that most of the real design occurs well before a fancy presentation is created to sell the work in… the actual design occurs when things are still evolving — before anyone feels strongly committed to anything. And I think you get better design if you can extend that period for as long as possible (even if you do so without holding up the rest of the project).
I’ll add “Here Comes Everybody” to my list.
Agreed. First drafts are frightening, but often the easiest way to solicit feedback. Thanks for the reminder.
You should take a look at Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky, and Rework by the 37 Signals fellows. Some interesting insights into innovation. Rework suggests you not learn from failures but rather ‘ignore’ failure and learn from success – pursue what works. Shirky argues that the power law distribution (e.g., the “long tail”) spurs innovation in that it inspires publishing first and filtering after – the opposite of the typical corporate product development cycle of ‘filter first and publish after.’ I’ve been trying to write something up on this recently but I keep getting saddled with distracting client work…
Also found a book recently, Innovation X, by a frog. There’s a lot of “management consultant” noise in it and not a little frog marketing, but there are some interesting insights that follow the above arguments. Not sure I’d buy the book, but there is a chapter online that gives you a sense of the overall idea.