3 Steps to Build Anything
If you don’t know where you are, how will you get where you’re going? This is the biggest obstacle I see that keeps people from achieving their goals. Not knowing where you’re at plagues you with ignorance about what needs to be done, what hasn’t been done yet, and why.
I find it helpful to look at projects (product development, life goals, etc) through a framework of 3 stages. Terminology varies depending on industry or other context, but it’s generally something like this:
Exploration
Refinement
Production
or
Ideation
Iteration
integration
or
Define
Design
Deploy
or
Conceptualize
Prototype
Manufacture
and so on…
But what do these all mean? How do these words really help? Let’s dive in:
Stage 1:
In this stage you are clearly aware a problem exists, and you either have an idea for, or you're in search of a solution. There's a lot of things you might do in this phase, but one of the most important things to focus on is validating that the problem exists, has clear characteristics, and that proposed solutions address the problem in a promising way. This might include talking to other people with the problem, gathering data, researching and evaluating existing solutions, brainstorming new ways to address the problem, proving concept solutions with prototypes, determining feasibility criteria such as budgets, timelines, market size, price sensitivity, and many other things specific to the thing being built.
As you're exploring all this, you're also gathering vital information that will help you determine whether the solution is good enough. In order to be great, it has to start by being good enough. Keep this in mind for a moment.
Stage 1 is complete when you've either determined there's no opportunity to move forward with the project, or you've validated the concept enough to warrant further investment to refine and improve on any successful testing you've done.
Stage 2:
Congratulations, you've made it to stage 2! The vast majority of projects never reach this point. They're either found unfeasible do to any number of constraints or discoveries, or their creator simply didn't know what the goal of Stage 1 was, and so they had no way to get to Stage 2
So what do we do in Stage 2? We begin the long march to fruition. We should have a little bit of a roadmap based on what we learned in Stage 1. This roadmap will generally inform us what characteristics the solution must embody. If we're talking about a physical product, it may not be clear yet what specific materials or manufacturing processes must be used, but it will point us in the right direction to start building highly functional prototypes that will allow us experiment with the concept in the real world.
This is where we iterate on things like form versus function. We test methods of reducing production costs, improving performance, and identifying failure modes. Does the device shatter when dropped from a reasonable height? Is it easy for people to understand and adopt? Do we really need that button on the side?
The answer to many of these questions is often: it depends. There's trap waiting for us here. When do we stop refining? When do we stop iterating? When is it perfect? Never. It's never perfect. We are working within real world constraints. We've got finite time and resources. The engineer's obsession is often to never stop engineering. There's always something else to improve. As one objective is completed, the next objective becomes visible, begging to be addressed.
Remember how we talked about deciding when your solution is good enough in Stage 1? Now's the time to put that knowledge into action. Stage 2 is done when the design is good enough to provide the value that you've decided it needs to provide. The first cars didn't have windshields, seatbelts, or heat, but neither did horses. Your product needs to be significantly better than the alternatives, and accessible. It's not accessible if it never comes out of development.
Stage 3:
Congratulations! If you've followed the directions so far, you're ready to move into Stage 3: production!
I'm using the term production here very loosely - it can refer to many things. Here's a few:
For a physical product, it may refer to steps needed to set up infrastructure for manufacturing, or to the manufacturing process itself. It can include details like packaging and shipping logistics, sales and marketing efforts, customer support,
For a digital product, it may refer to determining hosting services, landing pages, documentation, etc. There's a lot of overlap between physical and digital products in these respects, but the short story is you've got to have a way to get the thing to the people that need it. So you might call it production, or deployment, or integration - with integration meaning how your thing gets integrated into the world.
And BOOM. now you did it! Your thing is in the world, and it's doing the thing! You did it! Or maybe you're still doing it and working on maintaining it. Either way, nice work. You saw a problem in the world, and you did something about it. That's pretty rare. You're a rare one. Keep it up!
I'm really nerdy about this stuff if you couldn't tell. So if you've got any questions, or just want to philosophize about the world of making things, send me a message!
