As designers, we always thrive for making things perfect. But you know what, sometimes this mentality ends up creating something contrary to what you have intended, and acts as an impediment to innovation.
The problem is,
we thrives for this perfection from the inception itself.
And that’s where also the pitfall lurks in.
When we ideate, we try to craft the finest from the first go itself. We may give our full focus and time on that initial one or two ideas.
But, at last, it might not even make the cut or end up in mediocrity.
Focus on quantity over quality
when you start with.
Don’t spend time polishing your initial ideas though if it’s good. Keep digging.
Because you may not cover all the possibilities if you limit the explorations to a few. The more you explore, the more you get connected to the different nuances of the problems.
The initial couple of solutions that may pop up might be obvious and influenced. Only if you move past that and keep exploring more, innovations spur.
Also, the time you spend on perfecting something will create an affection for it. And you’ll be less motivated to explore more. Instead, you’ll defend and make yourself blind to its shortcomings.
Each exploration will teach you something new. Something you might not have thought of earlier.
And these collated learnings from each exploration will guide you to craft the best of all.
Thomas Edison tried more than 6,000 filaments to find an ideal one which led to the invention of the bulb. But it doesn’t mean he did something new in his latest iteration to make it work. It’s the collated learnings that paved the way to the ideal solution.
Next time, don’t limit yourself to just 1 or 2 ideas. Focus on quantity — no of ideas explored — than quality — perfecting a single solution. Because the path to a perfect solution lies in that iterative process.
Crazy 8’s is a good practice you could use in your next project to make sure you have done enough explorations.
Thanks for reading.
Cheers!
