Safetygoat

Practical imperfectionism

Monday, July 19th, 2010

I’ve always been pretty fast at getting things done.

My attempts at dress making have resulted in haphazardly created dresses, which got an initial 5 second sketch, and were then redesigned as I went, and changed features depending on my patience and (lack of) dressmaking skills.

I lament my quickness sometimes, especially as my career is now web design. Never have I met a bunch of perfectionists, who obsess on every detail, they look at me in horror and, I believe, can’t even comprehend how I could POSSIBLY leave something that is a few pixels out.

I learn fast, I design fast and I code up fast. I am pretty good about doing things semantically correct.  But, if I know that doing it semantically correct would take me another 3 hours, and a slightly non-semantic method is perfect in seconds and I have a deadline, my choice is always clear.

BUT I miss a lot of the tiny details. I’ll do things to get them done to a standard of 90% or so, and then go back and fix them later. When I’m learning a new technology, I’m okay with not knowing the right way of doing things, as long as it doesn’t impede my ability to finish things.

Perfection is a luxury

Most projects are impeded by budgets and often times there’s money for new features, but not for polish.  I know mine are, and while I’ll spend some of my own time (unpaid) to make it look a bit nicer, when you have as many projects on the go as I do, you have to stop somewhere.  Close to perfect has to be “good enough”. When you’re on a small team trying to do a lot, you have to sacrifice absolute perfection for speed sometimes. That suits me just fine (it’s also the theory of shipping by Seth Godin:  sometimes you’ve just got to ’ship’).

This doesn’t mean I go back and strive for perfection.

For example, during every release, I spend some time adding a few minuscule details in (a subtle border, moving things a few pixels or cleaning up some code, for example). Most people won’t notice, but occasionally I’ll hear, “It looks much better (for some reason they can’t put their finger on)”. I think you have to continually refine your front-end code. If you don’t, your code base gets completely unmanageable.

On the other hand, I know web designers who ALWAYS does it the absolutely right way the first time. Their designs are pixel perfect to their mocks. They won’t use hacks, but will spend HOURS figuring out the “proper way” to do something.

That’s okay too.  Different styles work for different projects.  I’m always more keen to get the user flowing through the site smoother, rather than making sure under the hood looks amazing.  Surely that matters more to 99% of the people using the site (1% are the ones that view source)?

I’m not scared

I have no problem with using a hack “just for now”, or if it’s an area I don’t know much about. It also means that I’m not super scared of new technology. It’s just the way I get things done; practical imperfectionism works for me.

Saying that, I am a bit tired of too many projects at one time, and am working harder to give myself enough time to actually think about the details.  Being imperfect is not a goal, just a necessary evil for the busy designer.