13 Nov 2012

I spent some time today looking back over some of my design work from the past year. It was an interesting exercise.

Success is rarely immediate when designing software. No matter how much you feel you understand about your customers and the problem you’re solving, first sketches and design explorations often miss the mark.

Even when you arrive at what feels like a good solution, hindsight can quickly change your perspective. A few months later, there’s niggles you want to change. After a year, looking back can be embarrassing.

We’re naturally motivated to forget bad design and be retrospectively pessimistic. Blame unforeseeable and inevitable situations.

But, we shouldn’t hide away past mistakes. Instead, embrace them. They indicate progress. The lessons you’ll learn in a few months time from the work you’re doing now will simply make you a better designer.