“Anything worth doing, is worth doing right.” - Hunter S. Thompson
“Anything worth doing, is worth doing poorly.” - Marshall Rosenberg
The two sayings are quite the opposite, but both are legit. We humans are kind of simple creatures. We need simple sayings we can remember, but designing efficiently is not a binary endeavor. During my practice, I have heard company leaders pushing for the "fail fast" direction, sometimes saying "perfection is the enemy of the good" and expecting super quick results. I do understand their urge to be in the market, ASAP.
In the era of MVP/agile software development, design is often pushed into the direction of having something "quick and dirty." Research is something pushed out of scope with the same logic… "ain't nobody got time for that." So what is the best way to design? You may not like my answer, but I say: it depends.
If you are about to sing for your friends for the first time in your life, just do it. In that case, doing poorly may be just better than not doing that at all. The same applies to many aesthetic elements in a design (or the design of necessary, but non-essential functions.)
If you are about to build a table out of wood - so you are using the Earth resources for something that may last long - then it is worth doing it right, otherwise you just generate more trash for no good reason, just for your own convenience. Of course, it is not worth it to spend 15 years just to build one table, because it's not for an eternity… but don’t rush something poor out in 5 minutes.
There is balance. Some things are worth doing/building right: bridges, houses, space rockets, medical equipment, children education, etc. Yes, that will put some extra pressure on you, but deal with it and please do it right—because it is worth doing right. No one wants a poor bridge, which collapses in a week (except some edge cases, like saving 10 elephants from a flood and you need to build something extremely fast, but not long lasting (since the flood will destroy it anyway.)
Efficient design means knowing what needs to be done right (requiring research) and where "failing fast" with a "quick and dirty" (poor) solution is viable.
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