Experience beyond software

Potholes.

I was in Puerto Rico this time last year. Driving there is like driving in the states: the roads look the same and you drive on the same side. Easy.

As I drove out of the airport, I saw a yellow circle on the road. I didn’t have enough time to react and I went right over it…

THUD!

My car shook violently. I was convinced I had a flat tire, or worse.

Thankfully, the car was fine. And I realized what that yellow circle was for: highlighting potholes.

I faced many more yellow circles after that. I wasn’t happy about it, but I preferred those yellow circles over having to guess if something on the road was a pothole.

In software, we call this debt. We know there’s a problem, but it’s easier to slap a bandaid on it for now and solve it later.

I worked on a product where data entry folks wrote down customer information from an email on post-it notes. They would then key-in that data into other online forms. Essentially going from digital to analog and back.

It worked. Except for when there was miskeyed data, or duplicated data, or productivity loss from manual data entry, or security risk by putting customer data on post-it notes, or a lack of data integration.

“But it works.”

We ignored the problem, because solving the purely product part was easier than solving the user experience part.

I feel like a lot of design work has devolved into drawing yellow circles around problems. When we talk about an end to end journey, we limit ourselves within the confines of the digital product.

When do we fill the potholes?

I remember reading about a product team that dedicated a sprint solely for fixing paper cuts in the experience. Their problem solving was also limited to software, but I loved the mindset of doing better for the users. (I can’t remember which company this was or where I read about it. I’d appreciate it if you could share it!)

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P.S. What problems in your life are you covering with yellow circles instead of fixing them?

P.P.S. This was my favorite photo I took last year in Old San Juan. The colors of the sea were so vibrant.