Searching for the Impossible Experience
There are two concepts that everyone in the usability field should learn early. First, some things by their very nature are not simple and straight forward and no matter what you do they will be difficult to understand. Second, you can never make all of the users happy all of the time.
The first concept is one that I continually struggle with as it begs the question of, “when is enough, enough?” For every product and designer this point is different. Sometimes you may have the resources to continue to refine it over and over. Other times you may need to make the decision to stop grinding the wheels and move forward with the application.
For my self I find that doing a complete design of something more than three or four times becomes counter productive. Typically somewhere in those first designs is the core of what the interface should be. From there it can be shaped into the best solution possible. But this shaping can only happen with a clear and detailed direction. Once that disappears all design work should cease. If the stake holders still have concerns they should provide a detailed direction for the project and refinement can then resume. If they cannot provide a detailed direction then the product should be reviewed by users (assuming time allows) or released to the public with the understanding that some fast fixes will need to follow.
While the second concept seems obvious it requires you to ask a few questions. The fist one that is often asked is, “is it better to make all of the people happy some of the time or some of the people happy all of the time?” I would argue you cannot do either of these. The best you can hope for is to make most of the people happy most of the time.
The tricky part then becomes defining what “most” and “happy” means. I believe “most” is as close to 95% as economically possible. “Happy” is really a measure of contentedness with the product in question. Again the issue becomes relaying this information to stake holders who would like to see all customers happy all of the time.
Similar to the first concept, refinement work should cease when detailed direction stops flowing from the stakeholders, even if there are still members who feel the product isn’t “ready”. This is because it is not productive to simply say something is wrong and not provide any explanation of why it is wrong or more importantly how to fix it.
Finally the hardest part about both of these concepts is that they feel like an admission of failure. You have to stop work when you may feel like it could be better. If you are anything like me this is a hard pill to swallow.