Little Things Add Up: The Effect of Details in Aggregate
It’s the little things, in aggregate, that can make the difference between something being exquisite and delightful, or else being full of friction. When done well, the little things add up to make an overall positive impression. And, on the flip side, when ignored or done poorly, the little things add up to leave a negative impression.
This is why “good enough" can be the enemy, and why implementing many features poorly is actually a worse plan than implementing a few features very well. Though the princess slept on many mattresses, just one pea under the whole stack ruined her night’s sleep.
In the middle of the project
I felt the temptation to sidestep a detail here or there. I'd have to remind myself that I couldn't take a shortcut — not even once. What would seem like a negligible issue in the moment would soon snowball into another sidestepped detail and then another, until there was an overall feeling of sloppy work.
When you're in the middle of the project, you think, "well, a one-off here and a one- off there is not the end of the world." But shortcuts add up, and those little details — for the good or for the bad — come together in aggregate and make the difference between something that is either exquisite, ordinary, or poor.
And so, when you've committed to not take shortcuts, you quickly learn that sweating the details is where most of the hard work lies. Like I've mentioned before, it's that 80/20 rule: 80-percent of the project gets completed with the first 20-percent of effort, and then it takes the remaining 80-percent of the effort to complete the final 20-percent of the project.
But it's worth it because in these details lies the overall feeling of the product. The underlying "truth" of our product is found not in the feature set but in the details we implemented well. The details make the design.