Incremental improvement

Once in a while we get the budget, authority and time to make something big happen - a new project or a website redesign.

But most of the time that's not the case. Our sights are lower - our tasks are smaller. We find something wrong, we fix it. We add new content to fill a gap. We improve the search results by adding meta-data.

A website is never finished. It's both a blessing and a curse. It will always need updating and always have room for improvement. Products can undergo incremental improvement too. Stamps that you don't need to lick. Notes that have sticky stuff on the back. Ketchup in a squeeze bottle. Cars with anti-lock brakes.

I enjoyed one summer I spent working construction building townhouses. I always liked the satisfaction of walking off the work site at the end of the day and being able to look at a wall or a roof that you had helped build that day. Progress was clearly visible. That's not always the case when your job involves pushing paper (or pixels). But by making the little things a little better, we can get that same sense of daily accomplishment in the digital age.