Perfect is the enemy of good

Recently I reviewed all of the error messages for our online service.

This meant reviewing what we'd already built and checking for any error scenarios we hadn’t covered, making sure users would see a helpful message if an error occurred.

I spent a long time obsessing over trying to perfect the messages. I lost sight of what was good enough.

When I did share the error messages with our team of developers they discovered some new error scenarios anyway that I hadn't covered.

They asked me some great questions about my content decisions to make sure the messages were as helpful as possible for the user.

If I started the work again I'd share the new error messages with the developer team sooner. The messages improved after I made changes based on our conversations.

I also got more experience working collaboratively with a team of developers. And it got them talking and thinking about how we could make things easier and simpler for the user.

Working on these error messages taught me a valuable lesson as a designer to release the value of my work as early as possible. Don’t spend too long trying to make your work perfect. Make it good enough.