[breckenedge]

At first glance I didn’t like this article (due to a long history of poorly executed redesigns for design’s sake) so I gave it a few minutes and reread it, and now I like it.

Sometimes when reviewing people’s redesigns, I can’t see the beautiful thing that they’re envisioning, only the trough. And over the years I’ve noticed that a lot of redesigns never make it out of the trough. I like the idea of doing small things quickly, I think that’s good, but that’s also technical debt if the redesign never results in a benefit.

[hinkley]

You can build stairs on the near side of the trough before you commit to climbing down into it.

Prototyping and figuring out where the most friction is, chipping away at it with each new feature that touches that area.

One of the cleverest things I figured out on my own rather than stealing from others, was to draw the current architecture, the ideal one, and the compromise based on the limits of the our resources and consequences of earlier decisions. This is what we would implement if we had a magic wand. This is what we can implement right now.

It’s easier to figure out how to write the next steps without climbing into a local optimum if you know where the top of the mountain is. Nothing sucks like trying to fix old problems and painting yourself into new corners. If the original plan is flawed it’s better to fix it by moving closer to the ideal design than running in the opposite direction.

What usually happens is people present an ideal design, get dickered down by curmudgeons or reality, and start chopping up their proposal to fit the possible. Then the original plan exists only in their heads and nobody else can help along the way, or later on.

[mattgreenrocks]

> Sometimes when reviewing people’s redesigns, I can’t see the beautiful thing that they’re envisioning, only the trough.

Distinguishing between the idea and the implementation is vital.

If the idea is good then a few rounds of review is all that's needed to shore it up. If the idea is bad, then there's more work to be done. Letting people know that you like the idea is key. There's also room for being okay with the implementation if it differs from how you'd do it.