Rule #1: No bikeshedding

Hey there! I’m Raika, a Senior UX and Conversation Designer at Amazon. If you’re new here, welcome! You can subscribe to my Secrets to Great UX Design newsletter for weekly insights. I share actionable ways to create great experiences, grow your career and more… for designers and non-designers.

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Imagine you’re sitting in a big conference room with a team of people.

You’ve been asked to design a new nuclear power plant. The power mechanisms, cooling systems, waste fuel storage, and so on all need to be figured out.

But for the past 25 minutes, everyone has been debating what color the bike shed should be.

Yes, you read that right, the color of the bike shed at the power plant!

Now, you might think that's a pretty trivial matter, considering the fact that we’re building a nuclear power plant which is a complex and critical project that requires a lot of attention to safety and technical details.

This is bikeshedding, also known as Parkinson’s law of triviality, in action!

The tendency to devote a disproportionate amount of our time to menial and trivial matters while leaving important matters unattended.

Bikeshedding can manifest in a number of ways in the creative process. Here are some examples:

1. Trying to appeal to everyone

2. Prioritizing novelty features

3. Going broad with your offering

4. Fixating on color selection

5. Obsessing over button placement

6. Wordsmithing

The details are absolutely important in design. But there’s a point where the time spent obsessing over details starts to have a diminishing return. Especially when they don’t solve the core problem.

Bikeshedding is human nature. We gravitate toward the things we can grok.

So we have to be careful we don’t fall into this form of procrastination for too long and instead use our limited resources to solve the core customer problem.

My Antidote

Tackle the important, hardest tasks first.

Before beginning a design, set clear goals for the project. Have clear priorities. Separate the trivial from the important.

In the sketching phase, I always write down what the core objective is for the part of the experience I am designing. And throughout the creative process, I evaluate if I am still solving the core objective or if I’ve deviated.

This is the value of wireframes in many ways. They strip away the visual component to focus on the hierarchy, the flow, etc.

This helps guide decision-making and ensures the focus is on the most important aspects of the experience. By setting clear goals and priorities, I can avoid getting bogged down in minor details or adding unnecessary features that are not critical to the success of the product.

The secret to great UX design is solving the core customer problem. And that’s no easy feat. It takes work to get to great. James Dyson created 5,127 prototypes, to reach the first bagless vacuum.

If you’re stuck optimizing what’s already working I have a brainstorming exercise for you to find problems to solve or moments of frustration here:

How to turn moments of frustration into moments of delight

It’s hard work but it’s worth the time and effort required to solve the real problems and create great experiences.

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Favorite Quote and Photo of the Week

Another word for creativity is courage. — Henri Matisse

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Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear your antidotes in the comments. Please consider sharing this issue via LinkedIn, social media, or email. And give it a like! Your support means a lot 💛

Until next week,
raika