Push Perfection to V2.0

Here’s my scenario. I’m a perfectionist. I can find flaws in any design and especially mine. Which makes it excruciatingly scary to think about releasing this product into the world for other perfectionists to critique. And that thought has colored every design decision I’ve made in the last month. It’s slowing me down. And since “every moment you’re working on something without it being in the public it’s actually dying” (Matt Mullenweg), it’s time to cut the dead weight.

I spent about 30 minutes writing down the ideal design; the design and the functionality that I would have in a perfect world where I have a couple of brilliant designers and engineers, infinite time and money, and while we’re at it, a beachhouse/office. Since I have none of those things, I took a picture of the notes, threw it an Evernote entitled “GroupTrip 2.0″ and forgot about it.

Now, every time I think about a potential redesign, instead of letting my mind wander to how I’d implement it and debate whether or not it’s worth it for the initial release, I just throw it in that note and get back to pumping out the last bits before launch.

Every new feature is an untested assumption that I know what the user wants. Since I’m already doing enough assuming for my Not-So-Minimal Hopefully-Viable Product (NSMHVP), I feel comfortable throwing those feature ideas into “two-point-oh”, and letting actual users drive which features eventually get implemented.

And my favorite tweet of the week comes courtesy of Tristan Kromer (@TriKro) “‘Anything worth doing well is worth doing poorly at first.’ – Anonymous”

No related posts.