Why Products Suck #2: Not Enough Iteration

Part II in an ongoing series of Why Products Suck (and what we can do about it).

You seldom get the design of a product right the first time. Your first impulse is going to likely be the obvious choice, or something you think the organization will approve. But the best solution often comes after a few trials, after making variations and seeing if and how they work. Your first thought is likely to be dull and overly-constrained. You need a period of exploration before settling on a solution.

Steve Jobs nails this in a quote in The Perfect Thing:

When you start looking at a problem, and it seems really simple with all these simple solutions, you don’t really understand the complexity of the problem. And your solutions are way too simplified and they don’t work. Then you get into the problem and you see it’s really complicated. And you come up with all these convoluted solutions. That’s sort of the middle, and it’s where most people stop, and the solutions tend to work for a while. But the really great person will keep on going and find, sort of, the key underlying principle of the problem. And come up with an beautiful elegant solution that works.

Exactly. And the way you “keep on going” is via iteration. Brainstorm more ideas than you could possibly ever use, then prototype the best of the concepts. Don’t settle for the first idea, or even the fifth idea. Playing more at the beginning will bring up fresher ideas. Change the framework. Try out different metaphors.

Just don’t settle for the first idea. Until you try out more, you don’t know whether it is the best one. Iterate, iterate, iterate.

This was written by Dan Saffer. Posted on Wednesday, September 9, 2009, at 7:43 am. Filed under Why Products Suck. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.