Sunday, August 29, 2010

What’s Good Enough for Goldilocks?

There’s a “Goldilocks Principle” as Dr. John Sorflaten describes at Human Factors International.

Goldilocks went into the three bears’ home and tested their chairs, beds and porridge, until she found what for her was “just right” (or so the fairytale goes).

His article Using the Goldilocks Principle to get design "just right" fits in very neatly with the theme of this “leave good enough alone” blog.

Go take a read of it, and find out how to apply the Goldilocks Principle to design.

Saturday, January 09, 2010

When is something good enough to be successful?

Always on thee lookout for a new slant on the “good enough” theme of this particular blog of mine, I was happy to come across an article by one “Mr. Ports” (somebody who, like myself, obviously harbours good sentiments towards IBM Lotus Notes and related software).

Mr. Ports asks:

“So how did they miss real game changers like television, mobile phones, personal computers and of course our old friend the Internet?”

Find out by docking your ship at Why better isn't always best which, I suppose, could be rephrased as “Why the best isn’t always good enough” or “The best man doesn’t always win” or similar.

Friday, January 08, 2010

“Good Enough” -- restated as “Worse is Better”

Perfection is an admirable aim. but in most situations unachievable.

Hence in this weblog I talk about the pros and cons of the “good enough” approach. Don’t have the chance to write much here, unfortunately, but just stumbled across an article that has a new slant on this broad concept.

Richard Gabriel writes about The Rise of “Worse is Better.”

Even though it discusses software design and development I suspect that it applies to lots of other creative fields outside computing.

So I’d encourage you to take a look at Richard’s exposition and carefully ponder its implications for whatever field you’re in.