This week and last week was spent working on the design specifics for our project. The design is the guidelines for the coming months of work and something that we can go back and reference when we need it. There are many things that can complicate the design process. The major one for me is that I like to make things as easy as they can be for others. This, in and of itself, is not bad, but it can lead to feature bloat. This, in turn, can cause me to get too focused on the extra features and not on the primary set of criteria for the project that we are working to build.
I like to find things that people have not thought of or what people are not focusing on. Some of it comes down to I like being responsible for things and having that responsibility. When creating a new feature often times the scope of the feature or really the reasoning behind it can be difficult to come by, and without those guiding forces, you can get lost. When designing, you have to have the use case in mind, and you have to keep focused on the core concepts else you can spend forever rethinking and never get anything done. I sometimes do this, but I tend to get focused on something and how I think it should be done, and if nobody else is there to bounce ideas off, you can dig yourself a hole that is hard to get out of.
The chief concern when designing should be to figure out how to accomplish the core need and then explain that so it is very clear what is being built. Thus the idea of blueprints and having all the details in one spot makes building skyscraper a lot easier than just winging it.
Features can help in specific use cases, but the project’s core has to be there else you can’t create new features to tack on.
Here is to this week and getting back to the core, getting back to the necessary, and here’s getting back to what needs to be done.
