My previous post was about balancing problem definition against design and implementation. The balancing act doesn’t end there, though. Even after defining the problem, there are usually multiple solutions to choose from and each of those can be considered complete with varying levels of functionality.

The goal is to deliver a well-balanced solution that offers just the right amount of functionality. There are easily dozens of decisions about the design and implementation that can throw the balance off. I’ve seen and fallen into a few patterns where these design and implementation tradeoffs didn’t quite balance.

Too Much Left on the Punch List

Some teams (engineering, design, or product) push back on basic functionality to cut down on initial effort. For example, the design requires the user can create an object but, to save a few hours of work, we’ll defer implementing rename, delete, or edit until later. They argue that these are easy to add later and the engineering team can always make these changes manually, especially early on when there are few customers.

No matter your role, it’s tempting to accept this argument. As a product manager, you can fit in an additional feature. As a designer, you are freed up from considering some design details. As an engineer, less code means fewer tests and fewer bugs. (OK, maybe it just means different bugs. 😉 )

Don’t fall for the argument. Returning to “completed” features later after the product has grown is harder than it seems. Eventually, what would have been fairly quick to add before becomes difficult as the team loses familiarity with that area of the code or, worse, changes are made only to uncover surprising dependencies and new bugs (“What? That name could never change before!”).

Omitting such basic functionality, even if you expect people will rarely need it, can lead to your users:

• feeling they have an unfinished product
• frustrated by attempting to find something that’s not there
• frustrated by the need to contact support
• abandoning that functionality or the entire product

Teams often cut corners when they doubt that the functionality is here to stay. Perhaps the product vision is unclear or there has been a recent pivot that undercut trust in the vision. In that case, you either need to convince the team that this work is going to stick around or you need to do the researching, testing, or experimentation needed to convince everyone (including yourself) you’re on the right track.

Gold Plating

It’s easy to overcompensate in the other direction and build unnecessary or low-value functionality. Obviously, doing unnecessary work consumes development time better used elsewhere. Gold plating also risks:

• complicating the user experience
• additional documentation or training effort
• creating a maintenance burden
• additional customer support

Finding the Balance

The performer finds balance through feedback, practice, and experience. Designers achieve balance the same way. The tightrope walker knows when they’ve fallen off the tight rope but it’s harder to know when a design is off balance.

Trying out design ideas with users is critical to get early feedback. As they use the design prototype to complete realistic tasks, are they using all the functionality? Are they missing functionality? What can be removed? What must be added?

As useful as usability testing is, it can’t replicate reality. It’s important to monitor how the design performs in real life. Luckily, we have a many tools at our disposal:

• Usage analytics tools like Heap and Pendo
• Customer support feedback
• User research – interviews, observation, surveys, etc

How much time you put into collecting and analyzing data depends on the size and importance of the feature. However, in order to improve your experience, you need to do something. Learning from each balancing attempt will help you get the balance right earlier in the process and spend more time finding new problems to solve.

 

Does your work ever feel like a circus? Yeah, mine too. I feel like I am always performing. My most popular performance is the balancing act – it turns out that product design is a series of balancing acts.

As designers and product managers, we are always balancing the good-cheap-fast triangle. No time to fully consider a design? Whiteboard it and check off “cheap” and “fast”. The lone UX designer with a bit of lead time? Check off “good” and “cheap”. Sometimes, the balance is determined by outside forces. Other times, we have more influence.

Let’s take a look at one of the most popular balancing acts that I call “Thinking vs. Doing”.

Thinking vs. Doing

How much time should you spend understanding the problem you need to solve and finding the best solution before starting implementation? You can ask this question when embarking on a new product design or when adding a small enhancement. Of course, the larger the project, the more important it is to understand the problem before getting too far with design. Larry Marine likes to say you should “avoid solving the wrong problem very well.” He’s absolutely correct.

Now, I use “thinking” facetiously. Understanding the problem requires more than thinking. It’s research and research is work. From the outside, though, it may look a lot like thinking, so you may be tempted to cut corners at this early stage. For example, I know that an idle engineering team can result in pressure to speed things up.

Here are some tips to do the right thing while keeping things moving and knowing when you are done.

Start with Assumptions

List your and your team’s assumptions about the product/feature as soon as you can. Involving the wider team will ensure you generate a comprehensive list. These assumptions include the market, users, proposed functionality, and technology. You can capture these as simple lists, provisional personas, requirements, business plans, or whatever combination works for you.

Next, for each assumption, determine your confidence level. Items with high confidence should still be validated, but these are also areas where you can press forward with design and implementation right from he start.

Involve the Entire Team

Is that idle team pressuring you? Get them involved in the research. At all times, it’s best to have engineers tag along on research activities and help analyze results. But, if the team is truly waiting on the research, you could quickly train a few people (who have the proper aptitude) to do some independent research activities.

Enough is Enough

Do enough research to validate or invalidate these assumptions and better define the problem space. The best guideline I’ve heard is to research until you are no longer surprised. As soon as commonalities start appearing, you should be able to firm up some of the initial assumptions and commit to bigger decisions.

You should also continue research activities throughout the life of the product (for example, regularly usability testing), so it’s OK to shift focus to solutions as soon as you can.

Solving the Problem

Once you think you’ve got the problem defined, it’s time to design the solution. This is another activity that needs careful balancing as you could easily search a long time before you find the “best” solution. At this point, I like to bias the effort towards finding a “good enough” design quickly.

Determining “good enough” is a blog post (or book) of its own. However, your problem definition will help determine what that means in the product’s context.

Keep Moving

It’s important for the entire team to continuously make progress. As a designer or researcher, one of your responsibilities is to communicate with the team. This communication needs to include more than deliverables – it needs to include the entire process so everyone shares a sense of progress.

Finally, after doing such a good job at balancing the problem discovery work, never lose sight of the problem you are solving. The act of design and feedback often leads to new insights into the problem and it’s important to incorporate those and adjust as you go.