WEBVTT 00:00:03.440 --> 00:00:07.360 A really hard part about agile design  for a lot of designers is this idea that 00:00:07.360 --> 00:00:11.310 we're going to put something out  into the world that isn't perfect. 00:00:15.600 --> 00:00:20.757 It's tempting to spend a lot of time tinkering with things, adding those little elements that we think will delight users. 00:00:20.757 --> 00:00:25.363 A lot of those things tend to get skipped on agile teams, and that can be really disheartening, frankly. 00:00:25.363 --> 00:00:28.662 The thing is, they're *not supposed to be skipped* on agile teams. 00:00:28.662 --> 00:00:33.360 It's kind of sad that they often are, but on good agile  teams that are constantly iterating and improving, 00:00:33.360 --> 00:00:36.860 there's plenty of time to add those touches  and to perfect the design. 00:00:36.860 --> 00:00:40.919 The key is *not to do it too soon*, and again this can be tough. 00:00:40.919 --> 00:00:46.093 A lot of designers seem to have some sort of belief in the idea of good design as its own thing, 00:00:46.093 --> 00:00:52.327 like there's a cosmic governing panel that decides whether something is well designed that's totally independent of whether 00:00:52.327 --> 00:00:57.198 the product makes users happy or makes money for the company or makes the world a better place. 00:00:57.198 --> 00:01:02.359 And it's a tricky balance. I'm the first one to point out that if you release an incredibly crappy product, 00:01:02.359 --> 00:01:06.336 you're not going to learn anything other than whether or not  people like to use crappy products. 00:01:06.336 --> 00:01:09.001 We're already pretty clear on that – they don't. 00:01:09.001 --> 00:01:15.270 On the other hand, if you spend months tweaking the fonts and obsessing over every single word or loading the product up with 00:01:15.270 --> 00:01:22.320 unnecessary features, you're very likely to waste a huge amount of time and money building things that nobody cares about but you. 00:01:22.480 --> 00:01:27.918 I really wish I had a simple system that would allow you to decide when you've hit *good enough* every single time. 00:01:27.918 --> 00:01:31.755 You know – a "Can I ship it yet? [] Yes [] No"; maybe someday we'll get that working. 00:01:31.840 --> 00:01:36.522 Until then, I want to talk about cooking for a  minute. Stay with me; I promise it'll all come together. 00:01:36.522 --> 00:01:40.000 It might make you a little hungry, though. Let's say you're cooking dinner, 00:01:40.000 --> 00:01:44.340 and the first step in this brand-new recipe  you're trying out is to cut up some potatoes. 00:01:44.340 --> 00:01:48.801 Now, if you do a terrible job of it and hack them up  into uneven pieces, 00:01:48.801 --> 00:01:53.600 it's probably going to ruin the dish and make it inedible because half of the potatoes will be raw and half will be 00:01:53.600 --> 00:01:57.228 overcooked and mushy and the whole thing will be awful. 00:01:57.228 --> 00:02:03.040 If you're not much of a cook, the important thing to understand here is that things of wildly different sizes tend to cook at different rates. 00:02:03.040 --> 00:02:08.658 And that ends up with some things being overdone and some things being underdone. 00:02:08.658 --> 00:02:14.790 So, instead of doing that, you take a little time, you use good knife skills and you cut the potatoes better. 00:02:15.040 --> 00:02:19.360 But now you have to decide how much  time you're going to spend on the potatoes.  00:02:19.440 --> 00:02:24.160 Obviously, you could make them perfect, where  "perfect" means all exactly the same size and 00:02:24.160 --> 00:02:28.665 shape and weight, or cut into animal shapes or  trapezoids or whatever. 00:02:28.665 --> 00:02:35.071 Molecular gastronomists have almost certainly discovered the golden ratio of surface area to interior of potato, 00:02:35.071 --> 00:02:40.320 and I am sure that they would love to tell you all about it.  But the more time you spend carving your potatoes 00:02:40.320 --> 00:02:45.275 into identically sized polygons or whatever, the  less time you have for cooking the rest of the meal. 00:02:45.275 --> 00:02:50.690 And, frankly, having the potatoes perfect  doesn't contribute that much to the overall meal. 00:02:50.753 --> 00:02:54.960 The end result of perfect potatoes might not  be *noticeable* to the person eating the meal, 00:02:54.960 --> 00:03:00.262 and even if they did notice, it wouldn't increase their enjoyment of the meal enough to justify the time it took you to do it. 00:03:00.262 --> 00:03:04.845 Nobody wants perfect potatoes  at midnight. They want good potatoes at 7pm. 00:03:04.960 --> 00:03:10.320 Remember, your goal isn't to make a perfect potato,  whatever that means; your goal is to *make dinner* 00:03:10.320 --> 00:03:16.763 – preferably a dinner that people enjoy eating. And what even is a perfect potato, anyway? 00:03:16.763 --> 00:03:21.280 Maybe you get them all the exact same size but they're still  too big, so they take too long to cook, and what you 00:03:21.280 --> 00:03:25.795 should have done was make them 20% smaller so that  they came out at the same time as the rest of the meal. 00:03:25.795 --> 00:03:29.920 Or maybe what makes a potato perfect depends  on who's eating it. I mean, if you're ever cooking 00:03:29.920 --> 00:03:33.379 it for me, just make mine sweet potatoes and just  go ahead and fry them, OK? 00:03:33.379 --> 00:03:36.385 So, what's the solution? 00:03:36.480 --> 00:03:41.344 *Satisficing and iteration*. What is satisficing?  That doesn't sound like a word. 00:03:41.344 --> 00:03:45.768 Satisficing is a decision-making process that aims for *adequate or good enough*. 00:03:45.768 --> 00:03:51.567 What makes the potatoes good enough to eat and enjoy but doesn't take so much time that you never get them on the table 00:03:51.567 --> 00:03:56.219 and you don't have to take a bunch of expensive cooking lessons just to get them right? 00:03:56.219 --> 00:04:01.061 By the way, before you get mad at me and say, "We shouldn't just be going for good enough!" – *yes*, we should! 00:04:01.061 --> 00:04:06.100 That's what *good enough* means! As long as we're not defining good enough as "barely edible" 00:04:06.100 --> 00:04:10.419 – we're just defining it as something we can make that people will enjoy eating. 00:04:10.478 --> 00:04:13.819 In agile design, we're also often saying that good enough is 00:04:13.819 --> 00:04:18.191 something that people will be able to use to *solve a problem* and that we can *learn something from*. 00:04:18.191 --> 00:04:22.085 What we want to learn is: *What would make the thing even better?* 00:04:22.400 --> 00:04:26.475 Because on agile teams and, honestly,  when cooking potatoes, we get to *iterate*. 00:04:26.475 --> 00:04:30.080 I mean, no, you're hopefully not going to just keep  throwing out the potatoes and doing them over and 00:04:30.080 --> 00:04:34.960 over and over again before ever serving them, but  the neat thing about dinner is that a lot of us 00:04:34.960 --> 00:04:40.480 eat it every night. We can try these potatoes  tomorrow or next week or whenever we feel like it. 00:04:40.480 --> 00:04:44.160 Maybe we wouldn't try out a brand-new recipe  if our boss was coming over for dinner, but 00:04:44.160 --> 00:04:47.499 you could practice making  potatoes as often as you want. 00:04:47.600 --> 00:04:51.130 Same with a lot of the kinds of products  that we build using agile technologies. 00:04:51.130 --> 00:04:55.840 We get to make things and share them with subsets  of users in safe environments and get feedback   00:04:55.840 --> 00:04:59.409 and then make them better. And the cool thing is  when we iterate like this 00:04:59.409 --> 00:05:03.878 we actually start to develop an idea of what *better* means. 00:05:03.878 --> 00:05:07.541 Let's say the first time that we make the potatoes we cut them roughly the same size, 00:05:07.571 --> 00:05:10.719 but we try not to stress too  much about them being a little off. 00:05:10.719 --> 00:05:15.390 This lets you get the potatoes on the table so that you or your  family or whoever you are cooking them for can try them. 00:05:15.390 --> 00:05:20.536 Maybe the potatoes would be better if you cut them a little smaller. Maybe the dish needs twice as many potatoes. 00:05:20.536 --> 00:05:25.434 Maybe you decide to substitute  cauliflower potatoes like a terrible person who hates food. 00:05:25.476 --> 00:05:30.865 Maybe the problem isn't the potatoes at all – it's the spices; they're all wrong; you didn't see that coming, did you? 00:05:30.923 --> 00:05:36.203 You'll have a much better  idea of what *better* means once you've shipped the 00:05:36.203 --> 00:05:41.215 meal and gotten feedback about what people liked  and hated and what they left on the plate and why. 00:05:41.280 --> 00:05:47.481 This is why I say there's nothing wrong with aiming for good enough, especially on the first few versions of something. 00:05:47.481 --> 00:05:52.202 Good enough doesn't mean gross and inedible, and it doesn't mean too broken or bad to learn from. 00:05:52.238 --> 00:05:57.869 It definitely doesn't mean we're never improving on it. It means we're getting something out that is *good enough 00:05:57.869 --> 00:06:01.267 to get feedback on and then we can improve it over time*. 00:06:01.360 --> 00:06:05.440 Besides, spending less time obsessing  about the potatoes lets you spend time   00:06:05.440 --> 00:06:09.735 on more important things like the fact that you  should have just made dessert and ordered a pizza!