Adding up the value of 1% incremental design work
The reality of design work in the UX/ Product space is not always going to be the big end-to-end, double-diamond, time-intensive projects. Alongside the large projects to sink your teeth into, never underestimate the value in making space for the smaller bites (or nibbles?) of work too. I have worked in organisations where there has been a conscious effort to always make room for the “1% improvements”. It can either be completely separate or related to the bigger pieces, and may be part of discovery or delivery. Some examples may be in the form of design tweaks to optimise an experience, an experiment to challenge a hypothesis, or a lean version of a new feature design to get early learnings. In all cases, I consider incremental design work to be low-medium effort, delivered within a relatively short time frame, and focused on a clear outcome.
So... what is the value?
Sets momentum that adds up
Despite the title, the outcome isn’t literally going to be an exact 1 percent increase in a metric every time — but you would still expect some level of success measured. In the delivery space, it is the concept that continuously making small design optimisations will add up to a significant outcome overall. It’s important to understand what exactly the bigger picture is, while simultaneously focusing on small details. For example, a single design tweak on a loan application flow might not make much of a difference on its own. But add that onto a number of other copy and design updates based on a heuristic review, with the holistic goal to help users proceed through the application journey. After several incremental changes that are iteratively rolled out throughout a quarter, it could all add up to an overall improved user experience and uplift in application completion rate. After every delivered MVP, there’s often the question of: what’s next for this feature? Carving out space for incremental improvements means there is time to prioritise and action optimisation efforts on an ongoing basis.
Nurtures a learning and experimentation mindset
When executed in the discovery space, design plays a role in testing and experimenting with ideas. Particularly within continuous discovery where the cadence of experimentation should happen frequently, every design effort helps build momentum towards the desired outcome. As the rhythm of experimentation increases, the practice inevitably promotes a learning mindset. You will keep learning from each design and each experiment result, which would either prove or disprove your assumption. It may very well lead to even more ideation of design solutions which brings you even closer to the outcome.
Achieves quick wins before going big
Small incremental designs could also be a way to achieve results early before expanding it into a larger scale solution. It’s a way to reduce risk and measure outcomes through a form of experimentation and keeping the initial design as lean as possible. As an example, it could be a simple website banner or landing page to validate an idea before moving forward with more complex features. On the flip side, if it actually doesn’t deliver the expected results (disproving the assumption), knowing that we didn’t over-invest in the design and development allows us to step back quickly and pivot as necessary. You don’t want to get to the stage where you have put in so much time and effort that you fall in love with a solution that wasn’t even worth it in the end (and makes it harder to pivot)! Save yourself from the heart break, and put that energy into designing the next idea to test instead.
Encourages progress over perfection
Designs can be “quick and dirty” at those discovery or experimentation phases, as long as it achieves the learnings needed (sorry perfectionists..). It might not be pixel-perfect or even have all the expected functionalities, but if it’s a step forward in understanding how users will respond to the solution then it’s going in the right direction. It is necessary to find the right balance of what’s “good enough” for the experiment and for the user experience. For example, a fake door test may help gauge the desirability of a feature, but it can also be an unexpected and annoying experience for users if it’s not well managed. So we need to be mindful and ensure a level of transparency. It may be helpful to tell users that we are working on the feature, and/or to give them alternative pathways for what they are trying to achieve. Anything that could negatively impact the overall experience should be minimised. Otherwise, different ways of testing the design could be explored instead. Once we achieve the level of confidence to proceed, we can then focus on progressing to the next design phase — which can now be less “quick and dirty”, and be more refined and cleaned up.
Shows and measures progression
Instead of waiting for a large project to be launched and then all the metrics analysed, with 1 percent incremental efforts you can see and measure the results relatively quickly due to the rapid delivery and narrower scope. It’s not just the satisfaction of seeing your design out in the wild, but more importantly it’s in learning how users respond to it. Whether it actually delivered the expected customer value (and if it doesn’t, get their feedback to understand why!) and from there, understanding what steps should be taken next to move forward. Having the visibility of progression also helps break down the incremental impact along the way, and see how each iteration adds up in the end.
Whether the design effort is in the optimisation or experimentation space — when done continuously and with a clear outcome in mind, small actions can build up to a big difference.
