The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left hand side of the studio would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced. All those on the right hand side would be graded solely on quality. We can learn a lot from what happened next…
The grading system was simple: On the final day of class he would bring in a bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group. 50 pound pots scored an “A”, 40 pound pots scored a “B” and so on. No marks for broken pots. Those graded solely on quality needed to produce only one pot, albeit a perfect one, to get an “A”.
At grading time a curious fact emerged. The works of the highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work —and learning from their mistakes— the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.
This story comes from an excellent book called “Sketching User Experiences” by Bill Buxton. Bill refutes the common phrase “build one to throw away” replacing it with “sketch 100 to throw away, then take stock of what you learned”. I find that nothing teaches me more about a design challenge than trying to solve it myself with a pen and paper.
Chasing a skill through theory alone is like studying for a marathon.
13 Comments
Nice post Des! Reminds me of 37 Signal’s book, Getting Real; get it out there and learn from what your users do, don’t waste time with theorizing and meetings.
Posted by Lee Munroe at 3:34 pm on 7 January, 2009.
Pics or it didn’t happen
Posted by mike at 8:36 pm on 7 January, 2009.
Classic, classic story. Thanks much.
Posted by Luke at 2:41 am on 8 January, 2009.
For me, the point here is less that ‘quality over quantity’ is wrong, it’s just that in order to get to ‘quality’, chances are you’re going to need to get through a vast amount of ‘quantity’ … practice makes perfect!
Posted by Paul Campbell at 12:12 pm on 8 January, 2009.
Reminds me of the widely cited “10,000 hour rule” from Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers (which, I should note, I haven’t actually read yet, so I may be mischaracterizing), suggesting that “genius” has more to do with persistent effort than anything else.
Posted by Chris Devers at 7:07 pm on 8 January, 2009.
Funnily enough Chris, I’m reading Outliers at the moment as well
Posted by Des at 11:44 am on 9 January, 2009.
Fine little reminder, thank you
Posted by Fred at 10:01 am on 12 January, 2009.
I just read this story today (from a book by John C. Maxwell). It’s a great lesson.
Posted by leroy at 12:48 am on 6 February, 2009.
Hmm… Must try that approach with the new plane design we’re just getting started with. If it works for pottery, software and web design why should aviation be any different
Posted by Ariel Flugzeug at 2:16 pm on 17 February, 2009.
Ariel,
Do you think that the current airbus design was the first one they planned? Do you think they didn’t iterate over it? Try out what works? Or did they get everything right every step of the way and just cross their fingers for the first take off?
Posted by Des Traynor at 4:54 pm on 18 February, 2009.
nice, really nice!
Posted by genagiste at 1:19 pm on 17 April, 2009.
I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.
Quotation of Plato
Posted by vigrx at 6:46 pm on 8 December, 2009.
Oddly enough I’m reading both Outliers and Getting Real too! Must check out that one by Bill Buxton.
Great post, really echoes experiences I’ve had over the last few months working across varied responsibilities. The worst enemy of productivity is getting bogged down in the details for too long. Get the first itteration of everything done, on time. By the time you can make the time for a second look at anything you weren’t happy with, the ideas needed for revision are primed and ready to spring out of your brain and pimpslap any problems you had.
Posted by Will Greene at 11:13 am on 26 January, 2010.
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