"Here's a nutty idea: designing terrible solutions makes you a better designer. I know that sounds backwards. Designer portfolios share only the most pristine of examples. And we're taught about efficiency and time savings. Best practices tell us to move fast, fail fast, and get to good solutions quickly. So why waste your time thinking about the worst possible option?"
"What happened next surprised us all. As we looked at what we thought would be terrible solutions, we discovered they had some redeeming qualities. Elements that seemed obviously bad at first glance turned out to solve problems we hadn't even identified yet. Our "bad" solutions were teaching us about the problem space in ways our "good" thinking never could. Plus, as we intentionally worked towards a "bad" option we better understood what did and didn't work for the user."
Designing deliberately bad solutions can improve design outcomes by revealing overlooked constraints, trade-offs, and user needs. A team reinventing a complex workflow produced a deliberately bad version and found unexpected redeeming qualities. Elements initially perceived as obviously bad uncovered solutions for unrecognized problems and clarified what did and didn't work for users. Creating bad options served as a powerful filter to define what 'good' means by contrast. Relying only on acceptable, similar solutions narrows exploration and risks optimizing a single option without understanding the boundaries of quality.
Read at Medium
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