When building something new, our intuition, creativity, and passion act as the raw materials to bootstrap our new thing. We use what we already know about the problem to inform early product decisions. We iterate rapidly because we already have so much context on the problem we’re solving. Huzzah, quick feedback loops! This feels glorious. We refine and refine and refine some more—edging closer to v1.0.
Eventually though, we’ll arrive at a stubborn crossroads. Our confidence is gone, and we’re not sure how to iterate ourselves towards clarity. Should we put X over there or here? Does this icon make sense or should we use this other one instead? By this point, we’ve already pushed through discomfort during the product development process, but this time feels different. There’s so much fog we start wondering if the entire product makes any sense at all. We contemplate a complete rebuild.
Welcome to the climax of certainty. Welcome to a crossroads that can’t be resolved solely through intuition or more feedback. When we arrive here and the tradeoffs don’t offer clear conscious, the only superheroes that can save the day are users.
Praise the glorious, humble, prescient user. Offering original insights, they salve this crossroads and offer us a way forward.
All we have to do is ship it. The climax of certainty, while uncomfortable, is nature’s nudge that we’ve arrived at v1.0. We’ve exhausted our raw materials and the only path forward is to cut the release. Move quickly to ship and then go learn a ton from users. They’re the crossroads in front of you.