Designed for Use, 2nd Edition

Revisit Your Early Ideas

After you’ve invested a lot of time and effort into creating a better design, and after you’ve gone through a lengthy design process, you might feel that the resulting design must be your obvious best choice. After all, you’ve spent so much time and money coming up with it, it would be a waste not to pick it!

That’s called the sunk cost fallacy.

It’s a fallacy because you’re making decisions based on the time and money you’ve invested in a design and not based on the design’s actual merits. It’s often a good idea to take a step back, look at the journey you’ve made, and revisit some of your earlier ideas. Earlier ideas are often simpler, and when it comes to UX design, simpler can sometimes be better.

Don’t feel obliged ...