When I’m reading through business requirement documents, creative briefs, or high level explanations about what a site should do there’s one line this is almost always there:
“We want the design to be flexible for the future.”
It’s by far my least favorite thing to see. My beef is not that I think sites shouldn’t be flexible for the future (they should!), it’s just that the expectations surrounding this one single line vary so greatly.
There’s no doubt that thinking about the future is vitally important to a business. But I’ve seen countless conversations (about navigation structures, page description diagrams, wireframes, and visual design) get derailed because “we need to think about what might happen in the future”. This should never, ever happen. We should base our discussions on what you know, for certain, today.
Similarly, brainstorming about the future should happen before we start doing design. Otherwise, we run into trouble and the design you end up with will be less effective.
When I read the flexibility line, I can’t help but think the client is trying to cut design costs because they don’t want to have to do a large redesign again in just a few years. This makes some sense (you should be able to add features and tweak the site). But if down the road you want big changes, you’ll need to have another designer take a look at each proposed addition on a case-by-case basis, to figure out how they’ll best work with the overall design.
The bottom line is this: Designing with an eye toward flexibility and the future can be done one of two ways. Either you build a house and leave out a few bricks and some roof tiles, or you build a complete, smaller, starter house that is perfect for your needs now (but which you can build upon later.) In the latter case, you’ve thought briefly about the future, but you’re focused on building the best house for today.
That’s the right way to build out flexibility for the future.
Great post! We always tell clients that the objective is to know the known universe of “now”, but that it is helpful for us to know as much as we can about phase 2 and phase 3 — thinking about the short term iteration (what is coming in the next few months) and the long term (what is on their mind for the next year) and design for the now but at least keep the future top-of-mind to create as much flexibility and extensibility as reasonably possible.
When using the house building analogy, it is good to know if we are building a one-story house, but if you plan on building a second story addition in the next two years … I may lay out the plumbing and electrical differently. I could add some additional cost initially, but will significantly reduce cost and time in the future and all without impacting the experience of the short-term.
@Martin Ringlein Yep! You want to make sure you’re thinking about that flexibility for the future but to not let it be the main focus of your current design. Nice work extending the analogy too!
It’s why they say you’ve got to grow your business. I feel most just want to jump in there with a full blown site/app that meets the needs of fictitious users. Until you have actual people going in and using the site you’ll never know what parts are useful and what users might actually need in the future. That little thing you spent so much time developing might never get used.
I like the house analogy, so I’m going to extend it…
One of the reasons I’ve always rented my home is that I want a place that I’m happy to LIVE in. If you buy a place, you suddenly have to start thinking about other things: will it be a good investment? How much maintenance will it require? And so forth. Personally, I don’t want to put those kind of questions above, “Will I be comfortable living here?,” so I just rent.
It’s sort of the same thing. Sometimes, designing for the greatest possible flexibility and “future-proofness” leads to a house your users aren’t that comfortable in right now. And, frankly, if your users are comfortable right now, the future probably isn’t going to matter much, anyway.
Thanks for the great article. Whenever I encounter a powerful analogy, I get really excited and my heart skips a beat. Thank you! I will be using the house analogy when discussing projects in the future (and the plumbing extension @Martin).
Another addition to the analogy is the “scraper” house and the scraper website. Sometimes it costs less and is less of a headache to start over rather than try to salvage what you have…
Thank you for this article!
I 100% agree, if only there were an easier way to explain this to clients. So far all of my attempts have been less than perfect, but getting closer.
The web may be digital, but nothing lasts forever…