Design for Everyone, Especially the 20%
Chances are, at some point in your design career, you have encountered the Pareto Principle (better known as the 80/20 Rule). Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist, “discovered” this principle in 1897 when he observed that 80 percent of the land in England (and every country he subsequently studied) was owned by 20 percent of the population. Today, a quick Medium search returns a wide array of results of how the 80/20 Rule can be applied to our daily lives: everything from task management, to weight loss, to growing an Instagram following.
Don’t let perfection be the enemy of progress
I first learned of the 80/20 Rule in the mid-2000’s and, ever since, have not been able unsee the ways in which the principle appears in various aspects of my own life and design career. However, the real game changer came when I reexamined my own design process through the 80/20 lens.
Early in my design career, I would vehemently resist releasing anything that was not fully realized. The resistance was coming from a good place, but it was my worst habit as a designer: I advocated for perfection over progress.
As the design field continued to evolve with Agile and the SVPG (Silicon Valley Product Group) methodology, I knew that I had to become more comfortable with the idea of an MVP (Minimum Viable Product). By applying the 80/20 Rule and asking myself, “What 20% of this overall solution can help 80% of the customers using it right now?” I worked to, eventually, break that bad habit.
The flip side of releasing an MVP is that you are not accounting for the remaining 20%, and may introduce some bad friction for those customers who are not in the 80%. It is incredibly important to have the confidence in your team and commitment from your organization that you will be able to continue to build, iterate and solve those 20% challenges, because:
1. Delivering an MVP and not allowing a team to continue to iterate on the remaining challenges reinforces perfection over progress. It teaches the team that they must pack everything they want into their initial, MVP release because, if not, they are not going to be allowed to continue to progress and iterate on the solution.
2. It can be reckless and, worse yet, unethical to avoid the challenges of 20% of humans using your product, just because those challenges are more difficult to solve for.
No one wants to be the 20%
Let’s face it: no one wants to be picked last, made to feel like the odd person out or be in the 20% of whom an experience wasn’t crafted for. While the 80/20 Rule is great for bringing focus and priority to your overall solution and vision, you should be very careful in how you apply it to humans using your product.
In most of the design scenarios for my team at CarMax, the 80% would be considered: tech savvy, digitally confident and empowered who know how to navigate and research. The 20% would people who adapt, slowly, to new technologies or are more hesitant to do so. Yet, they have the same needs as the 80% and those needs matter. Our team’s approach at CarMax has always been to design for everyone — especially the 20%. We don’t walk away from a problem space after releasing an MVP because the remaining challenges for that 20% are too big or too difficult. We continue to dig in.
Find your own balance
While there are many interesting and positive ways the 80/20 Rule can be applied to the craft of design, there are inherent dangers when you focus on people through an 80/20 lens. Reducing your users to a number dehumanizes them, making it easier to not go back and address their challenges and needs.
If we truly put people first and care about our craft as designers, I can’t think of a better place to start than making sure the experiences we create are accessible to everyone.
