- As we saw with New Matter,
for design to contribute its best
to a new venture,
it's critical to define and work toward
clear business objectives,
focusing on what is necessary and sufficient
to achieve them.
We refer to this as designing the impact,
not the product.
As a designer, I know this isn't as easy as it sounds.
We're already constantly juggling
constraints and objectives,
costs and benefits,
risks and rewards,
all while advocating for the end user.
Have you ever been presented with this conundrum?
Fast, cheap, good?
Choose two.
The premise is that,
if you want it to be cheap and good,
it's not going to be fast,
and if you want it good and fast,
it ain't going to be cheap.
Most designers, including me,
want good, good, and good.
We're trained to strive for perfection,
and we celebrate those who do the same.
This is what we're talking about
when we talk about the craft of design.
Like pretty much all the designers I know,
I've always sought perfection in my design work,
but, in retrospect, much of my pursuit of perfection
was focused on the microcosm of the product,
rather than also meaningfully addressing
the macrocosm of the business.
For example, I'd spend precious time
honing the details of a design
well beyond the resources or ability of the business
to produce at that point in its growth.
The excess time and budget that I consumed
could have had greater impact if spent elsewhere
in the development cycle or product roadmap.
Before building my own consumer products brand,
my instinct told me that the better I made a product,
the better the company would perform.
Later, as an entrepreneur,
I followed the same logic
and created products for my own company
that were neither fast, nor cheap
to develop or produce.
Instead, they were slow,
and they were expensive,
and they were, I think, amazingly good
at the product level.
But, as I soon discovered,
my overzealous design perfectionism
made these designs a threat
to the very business they were meant to grow.
Just in time to turn my business around,
I learned that,
within new ventures in particular,
design requires a new definition of perfection.
Here, we need a perfection that solves,
simultaneously, for the customer journey
and the business journey.
Time is money, and in a new venture,
money is in very short supply.
Without money, the venture dies.
Fast and cheap are requirements,
not options.
The necessary and sufficient design right now
is often far more valuable
than the otherwise perfect design
that's delivered tomorrow.
Ultimately, I was pleasantly surprised
how little of the customer experience we need to sacrifice
while pursuing a venture-appropriate level
of speed and frugality.
And this is where our final principle comes in.
Design the impact, not the product.
To make those most of your design efforts
within a new venture,
we need to design and work toward
clear business objectives,
focusing on what is necessary
and sufficient for success.
The required impact is the constant.
How it's achieved is the variable,
not the other way around.