How attention to detail turns good design into great design.

Photo by Eric Prouzet

Damn, an opening salvo at LinkedIn two weeks in a row. Though I promise this isn't another tirade at our professional social network ("Facebook for professionals" is how I had to describe it to a trades apprentice this week). This week I'm merely setting the scene.

I had to set up a new company page on LinkedIn yesterday. When you start a new company, not only do you have to set up the infrastructure, branding, website, etc. You also have to set up a LinkedIn company page so you can show the professionosphere that the company is real and you really work there.

LinkedIn is so crappy. Not the content, which is also crappy, the actual platform itself is crappy. Despite being the only admin on the page, every single time I made a change to the company page I had to reload the web page to make a second change. LinkedIn was adamant another admin was also making changes, despite there being none. It would refuse to do anything until I reloaded the page. As simply one example of the state of things, this really took the jam out of my doughnut for the rest of the day.

Until, that is, later that night my son sends me a message, unsure why he inexplicably has Discord Nitro at A$130 a year.

That tears it.

This morning then, through some forensic accounting we were able to determine that it was indeed a legitimate transaction. What's interesting is that neither of us actually remember setting up the free trial nor keying in any payment details. As if the event had passed from all knowledge.

It doesn't take a Sherlock Holmes to go back through the emails though to see what happened, and how an accidental Discord Nitro could have been prevented, if you look at the details.

The Devil

It turns out that years before, my son had gifted Discord Nitro to his cousin. So Discord already had the payment details. When my son opted for a free trial earlier this year, and wasn't asked for payment details, he just figured it was what it said on the tin; a free trial.

On the assumption nothing would be charged because no payment details were entered, went unnoticed. It's likely that buried in the details when he accepted the free trial was the fact that a card will be charged, at x date for y amount. Further, the follow-up confirmation emails from Discord also went disregarded on the same assumption.

Now he has Discord Nitro*.

The devil is always in the details.

The details is where Adobe hides it's devils so they can hit you with cancellation fees. The details is where Tesla hides it's devils so you can't sell the Cybertruck you own (lol). The details is where Amazon hides it's devils so you signup for Prime without even noticing (and can never leave).

I'm no psychologist, so I couldn't tell you how attention to detail works on a phycological level. But these companies weaponise a lack of it for their own financial gain. That tells me attention to detail is not that common across the general populous.

The Details

I pride myself on my attention to detail. Not just observation of details but the recollection of them and the application of them. I've snuck details into my designs so subtle, literally no one else but me notices. To the absolute delight of no one except me. I think it is without question a personality trait, one that seems to dovetail well with Industrial Design.

In ID the application of attention to detail exists at both ends of the design process (and everywhere between). It starts with gathering the needs of users, technical requirements, and the business itself. And it ends with the refinement of a design for production that turns a good product into a great product.

A big factor in attention to detail is taking the time to not just look, but to see. I've written before about taking time for design, and investing that time into the details is never wasted.

Details In

Humans are indeed strange creatures that do strange things for strange reasons. An oft-repeated experience amongst designers is that the users and customers will very often say they have a specific need or problem, but the true need or problem is something else. As a designer it's your job to dig into what they say the problem is and find that root cause. By solving the problem only by its face value, you may actually not be solving the problem at all.

Second order thinking is a necessary part of finding those root causes, but so too is looking at the details, and identifying nuance. I worked on a project last year that had a lot of ergonomic challenges. As part of identifying the optimum solution we did some usability studies. While looking at all the different grips people use, it was easy to put each grip into groups and then say which was best based on what was most preferred. However, amongst every grip there was one finger in a particular position in order to compensate for a particular challenge. By not noticing this particular detail, and designing to solve it, the true problem would have gone unsolved.

I can't stress enough how important observation is to gathering these unspoken needs. If most of the information you're working with is 2nd or 3rd hand, and most people don't have strong attention to detail, then it should be evident you're missing a big piece of the puzzle. Instead, talk to users (both direct and indirect), customers, and clients. This affords you plenty of opportunity to both read between the lines, and observe subtle behaviours that may otherwise go unnoticed.

Take time to absorb the details.

Details Out

While gathering detailed user needs is a very human-centred activity, producing a detailed design, at least the closer you get to production, becomes the opposite. Producing the design, as in creating the CAD and specifications, is often a lonely and machine-centric affair.

Nevertheless, creating thoughtful and beautiful details in a design is important to delivering a quality product that creates delightful user experiences. How crisp or squishy a snap detail feels could come down to 10ths of a millimetre. How quickly the base can be attached to the rest of the enclosure could save seconds - and therefore money - per device. The user certainly won't notice, and the client may not either, but it's one small amount of detail that adds that little bit of extra value.

To truly get these right means designing, prototyping, and testing. It takes time, and applying that whole process across the entire product. Yes, it all adds up to extra time in development. Yet extra time in development can pay back big time.

Not Only Details

That said, Industrial Design isn't all about the details. Creating great design means not just observing the details present in the needs of users, or adding details that contribute to the invisible 99%. Creating great design also means understanding the holistic. Understanding holistic needs and creating holistic design.

Let's do holistic design next week.

* Not that I'm terribly mad. He uses it a lot to chat and play with his friends. It's actually fascinating watching how teenagers engage these days compared to how we did it pre-internet. But that's something to expand on another day.