The power of a crappy first draft and why you should create one
Usually, when people hear the word ‘design’ they think about beauty, sleekness, seamlessness and sophistication. They are all the kinds of adjectives that we designers want to hear our products or services to be described as... once they are completed.
But striving for these things too early in the design process can be really problematic. Why?
It slows your journey to solving customer problems: if you are spending your time on making it look beautiful before you share it with customers, you don’t know if it truly solves their problems. Have you seen the first version of Amazon.com? (See below)
You become too attached to nice designs: if you spend too much time, effort, blood, sweat and tears creating a perfect looking draft, you’re going to be less open to feedback that will require significant changes. If you embrace the crappy first draft, you won’t be so attached and invested in it. Throwing away a quick first draft doesn’t hurt as much as one that you spent so long perfecting.
People are too nice: no one wants to insult your work (ok, maybe a few people). If you present users a draft that looks like you have spent weeks, months or even years putting it together, they are going to want to spare you the insult. Criticising a stranger's work is awkward so most people will tell you that it is great, even if they believe the opposite to be true.
Feedback is crucial to good design: before a design is complete, whether it be of a product, service or experience, you need to get feedback from users if you want it to solve their problems. Including end users and customers in the process leads to the best outcomes.
Many people I have worked with, especially non-designers, find this concept really hard to fathom. Mainly they fear that presenting something “scrappy” to customers reflects badly on the business.
From my many years of doing this work, I have found this concern to be unfounded. If anything, customers love to be part of this creative process and they appreciate it when companies actually listen to them and get their feedback. This is true for all types of customers. I have interviewed everyone from high net worth individuals to backpackers on a budget and everything in between.
How do you make sure your first crappy design doesn’t affect your brand image? Disclaimers and context! And a bit of excitement goes a long way too.
Here are some suggestions for what you can say to users. In the first stage, we need to get them excited and secondly, we need to ensure they we give them context and set expectations
Get them excited
You’re one of the few selected customers who will get to see this early prototype. You have the opportunity to shape and co-create this new product with us, please be as honest as possible so we can create something that suits your needs
We haven’t shown this to anyone yet, it doesn’t look great because we are still in the midst of the creative process. We want to harness your creativity/insights/expertise to help us.
We’re on a mission to change the way (insert project detail), to do this, we need your honest feedback on this very early concept.
Provide the context
This is just a prototype, a very rough first draft we are using to get feedback, please don’t worry about offending us with your feedback
At this stage we’re not worried about what it looks like, that detail will come later, at the moment we really need your feedback on (insert what you want feedback on e.g. how easy it is to find information)
You might notice that not everything works and there are some parts missing. That is because we are at such an early stage in the design process. This is why we need your help in finding the best solution
I hope these tips help you embrace the power of the crappy first draft!
First draft of Amazon.com
Cover photo by HalGatewood.com on Unsplash