Paralysis by analysis

During my life as a user experience consultant I was brought on board multiple times to help redesign major enterprise software applications.

Most of the time companies bringing me on had never worked with a user experience professional and definitely didn’t know what to expect. All of them just "wanted the app to look better" or "be more user friendly". I can’t blame them. The majority of people in the user experience field don’t even know what to call themselves, let alone have a single definition of what they do. How could I expect people not in the field to know what they were getting? I quickly learned that educating the client was the largest part of any redesign effort.

I’d get in and take some time to understand the application. I’d do background work using personas and scenarios just like Alan Cooper taught me. I’d draw prototype sketches on enough paper to kill an entire tree. I’d get real and build HTML prototypes. All while my client was wondering when the pretty colors and graphics were going to be brought to the table.

...Then I’d recommend they change the entire damn thing from the ground up. 

A variation of this scenario would always play itself out. Product managers would most often try to whittle down my ideas, taking selective parts they liked and sweep the major changes that were scary under the rug. Sound familiar to anyone out there?

History repeats itself

It’s a funny thing, being both the client and the consultant these days. I’m going through a design project on Cashboard that requires massive sweeping changes. Massive, scary changes just like the ones I used to propose to my clients. The type of changes that engineers would riot over because they required too much effort.

About 10% of the way through I found myself caught in a rut. I was facing numerous failing unit tests. I found myself not working on the project for a day or two at a time. I was second guessing my design decisions, even though I knew they were sound and necessary. 

I was being paralyzed by fear.

The fear of breaking things. The fear of an overwhelming load of work that I saw no end to. The fear I saw in my client’s eyes back when I was a consultant.

It’s times like this that you must rededicate yourself to the effort in order to get it done. Nothing grows without painful change. Being a web app, Cashboard has the luxury of constant improvement. If I don’t nail an initial release I can always refine what I have as I go along. I can push new releases live every day – even if some customers get pissed in the meantime. This has been my motto from day 1 and it’s worked out great for myself, and others.

How does one rededicate themselves to such an effort?

For me, it’s the driving desire to put all of my competitors out of business. It’s the status report of how many paying customers I have today versus yesterday. It’s how much my monthly revenue has grown from $0 only a year ago to a level that can sustain my lifestyle comfortably. It’s the validation of my intelligence, drive, and hustle by being able to show off what I’ve done. 

Being a self-motivated, self-run entrepreneur is a hard business and not for the faint of heart. But it can be done. I’m living proof.

Time to blast Pantera and smash out some coding. Until next time.

seth, Wed, 01 Oct 2008 05:49:00 GMT
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  1. Marc Novakowski about 4 hours later:

    Seth, you rock! :)

  2. josh about 7 hours later:

    imo, sevendust, sepultera, and tool go well with pantera.

    I’ve got this little pet project. i’ve been toying with it for a while in learning rails. It’s nothing big; something a rails dev could whip out in a few weeks but I only work on it when I have time. which isn’t much. I’ve been thinking what I want to do next with it and reworked it in my head. layed the new plan to paper, and am detailing the changes to take what I currently have to what it should be. it’s big, sweeping, scary (on a much smaller scale than cashboard). several models & controllers go away. just have to do it though. ..and I’m glad its not the scale that you have.

    good luck.

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