In essence, we usually don’t cherish something that has been broken, ranging from work attitude to corporate culture. When a bad phenomenon occurs, it will cause more bad phenomena.
Not long ago, I read an article “Broken Window Theory in Design and Product Development” . The article is very brief, but quite enlightening. Let me talk about some of my thoughts.
What is the broken window theory?
Philip Zimbardo, a psychologist at Stanford University in the United States, conducted an experiment in 1969. He found two identical cars and parked one of them in a middle-class neighborhood in Palo Alto, California. The other was parked in the relatively messy Bronx area of New York. The car parked in the Bronx, he took off the license plate and opened the roof, only to be stolen that day. The one in Palo Alto was ignored for a week. Later, Simbadu knocked a big hole in the glass of that car with a hammer. As a result, it was gone after only a few hours.
On the basis of this experiment, the political scientist Wilson and the criminologist Kailin proposed a “broken window effect” theory, which believes that if someone breaks the window glass of a building, the window cannot be obtained. With timely repairs, others may be subjected to some exemplary indulgence to break more windows. Over time, these broken windows create a sense of disorder, and as a result, in this public insensitivity atmosphere, crime will multiply and rampant.
“Broken Window Theory” also applies to product design and development
We usually don’t cherish something that has been broken, from the work attitude to the corporate culture. When a bad phenomenon occurs, it will cause more bad phenomena.
In a project, we usually postpone small things because of more important things. “This question is not important, we will do it later.”
Gradually, the whole project will be less and less motivated. Nothing goes well, but I can’t tell what caused so many problems.
Have there been some exemplary indulgences in daily work
plan. Always rushing to plan the new features of the next version, no one organizes and archives the features that have been launched. Later, the new planner took over and found that no one remembered the background and specific rules of the previous function. Ok, after the new planner finally figured it out and made the plan, since no one has sorted out the previous functions here, then I don’t need to sort it out either. Multiply the planning time by n times.
Interactive. Why are the interactions here and there inconsistent? Unclear, historical reasons. Which side should I follow? Let me think about it… Can it be unified this time? Well, the development time for this version is a bit tight, and it doesn’t affect the user experience very much… After a lot of discussions, we finally reached an agreement: then this version will maintain the status quo. Ok, next time you do this function, you will find a similar discussion will repeat itself again. After a period of time, you will find that similar inconsistencies will increase. The time for communication confirmation is multiplied by n times.
Vision. The visual style of the main platform has been flattened early. For the remaining non-mainstream platforms, let’s update the functions first, there is no time to make the visual revision. Ok, should I use the old visual style for this part of the new function, or should I use the new visual style directly? But it’s weird that the styles on one platform are not uniform. How to integrate them? Every update has to be tangled. The tangled time is multiplied by n times.
Development. The optimization of this problem, this version has more important things to do first, let’s postpone it. Ok, and then you will find that there are more important things to do first every week, but they have been delayed. Although it is not a “big problem”, because the problem has never been solved, I will always think of it from time to time, and it may become a big problem someday. Multiply the time of concern by n times.
…
These issues are not directly related to product experience, but they subtly consume our energy, affect our work efficiency, and affect our decision-making.
“Do it later” is usually a decision made to save time, but it ultimately wastes everyone’s time.
These problems will not shorten the time to solve them in the future because of “do it later”. On the contrary, you will find that more and more problems will be mentioned repeatedly, and you need to spend time on explaining and communicating repeatedly until it disturbs your work.
Whenever you want to do a new thing, are there some old things holding you back?
When you feel that everything is starting to fail, it’s time to take the time to clean up these small and unimportant issues.
By “fixing all broken windows”, your vision becomes clearer, your ears become clearer, and you can make good decisions again. Your work becomes more focused, and your motivation becomes stronger. On this basis, it prevents “more broken windows” in the future.
Only by solving the problems left over from history and optimizing your own environment can you focus more on solving new problems.
