

Stop Redesigning... Rapidly Evolve Your Design - martinshen
http://martinizer.com/post/26287572734/stop-redesigning-lean-rapid-interface-iteration

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ezl
i like the idea of this. however, in practice i don't know how to implement it
or draw the line between "enough iterations" and too much time spent on
iterations.

Right now, with a small, strapped team, my primary problem is finding enough
hours to do all the tasks necessary.

As a result, while the idea of slowly evolving the design to let customers
ease into it sounds good, I'm willing to shock my users into a radically
different design in order to save development hours.

My userbase, in particular is the sort that (I believe) won't dramatically
change engagement based on most designs (untested, and now that I write that,
ludicrous sounding, should test). Additionally, for early stage startups (at
least Rocket Lease stage startups), the total user count is very low and the
alienation risk carries a small absolute penalty relative to the time
sacrifice of incremental evolution.

tldr: article acknowledges that there is a time penalty for an incremental
design evolution. this is in contrast to the typical time BENEFIT to iterative
programming approaches. i suspect that many early stage startups can't afford
the time cost, so interface iteration is an important tool, but not to be used
by everyone.

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martinshen
I may not have made this as clear but with most product development,
continually evolving/iterating design may in fact be key to your startup's
success (though it may not in your case). Careful evolutions to product
education may give you better insight as to what changes to the interface
matter to your user.

Early stage startups tend to constantly "redesign" everything where in fact
evolving your design to the desired spot is a more educated approach.

~~~
ezl
i certainly agree that design iteration is important at certain stages.

when you're going from "black and white wireframe" to "something userfacing"
for example, you probably don't have to care; but with an established userbase
that is USED to the product, you should care more.

if your product is transactional and there aren't good alternatives (people
come to site X to send money to another person and this is the only one with
an API) you might not need to care, vs "people spend time as a diversion on my
site and explore photos and status updates of friends", it might be important
to care more.

100% agreement that evolving design to the desired spot is more educated -- I
think that statement is indisputable, as it is essentially saying "if you can
incrementally split test results with lots of different versions, you can
learn more".

With a large "total redesign" you just get one fat multivariate test that can
have conflicting results and you can't isolate the winning changes.

I was just stating that the time penalty for evolution might be too large for
extremely small teams. its not just a design, its design, implentation, and
testing the differences -- which takes a lot more time than just implementing
the design itself. without testing results, incremental design is only good
for "easing the user in" and you lose all the benefits of the "more educated
approach" you're referring to (which, in my mind is the valuable part... users
are forgiving, you can shock UI from time to time, but information gained can
be priceless)

