Most projects start in the wrong place
Someone opens a design tool. They make a screen. It looks pretty good. Then the team spends three weeks arguing about a button.
The button was never the problem. Nobody had agreed what the screen was for.
We have watched this happen for years. It is why we start somewhere else.
So what is an argument?
An argument is a few plain sentences. It says who the thing is for, what they are trying to get done, and what we are choosing to leave out.
Here is a real one from a project last year:
Warehouse managers open this on a tablet. They are standing up, wearing gloves, in bad light. They need to know what is late. Everything else can wait.
Four facts. Look how much they decide for you.
- Gloves mean big buttons. No tiny icons.
- Bad light means strong contrast. No pale grey text.
- “What is late” goes at the top, as one big number.
- Everything else moves down the page. Or off it.
We did not work any of that out in a design tool. We worked it out in one sentence.
Why words beat pictures at the start
A drawing is hard to argue with. It looks finished even when it is not. People react to the colours and miss the shape underneath.
Words are easy to argue with. That is the whole point.
You want the fight early, when changing your mind costs nothing. Not in week nine, when it costs a rebuild.
How to check if your team has one
Try this. Ask three people, separately, what a page is for. Do not give them options. Just ask.
If you get three different answers, you do not have an argument. You have three hunches sitting in a meeting together.
That is not a failure. Most teams are here. It just means the writing has not happened yet.
What it costs to skip this
On one project we joined late, a team had rebuilt the same settings page four times in a year. Every version looked better than the last. None of them stuck.
The reason was simple. Two groups inside the company wanted different things from that page, and nobody had written it down. So each new design quietly picked a side, and the other side asked for changes.
We did not redesign the page. We spent two days getting both groups to agree on three sentences. The fifth design shipped and stayed.
Where the sentences come from
You cannot write a good argument from a meeting room. The facts have to come from somewhere real.
For that warehouse job, we stood in a warehouse for a day. That is where the gloves came from. Nobody had mentioned gloves. They did not think it was worth saying, because to them it was just Tuesday.
You do not always need a field trip. But you do need something real. Watch five people use the thing. Read last month’s support tickets. Sit in on two sales calls. An hour of that beats a week of guessing.
The best details are usually the ones nobody thinks to tell you. They only turn up when you go and look.
What if you are not the one who decides?
Most people reading this cannot change how their company works. That is fine. You can still do this.
Write the three sentences anyway. Do not ask permission. Bring them to the next meeting and say: here is what I think we are building, tell me where I have it wrong.
People find it much easier to correct a wrong sentence than to answer a blank question. You will get better information in ten minutes than you would in a month of asking people what they want.
It also puts the disagreement in the open, where it can be settled. That is usually the actual blocker.
How to start this week
- Pick one screen. The one that keeps changing.
- Write three sentences. Who it is for. What they need to finish. What you are leaving out.
- Show those sentences to three people who work on it.
- Rewrite until all three read it and nod.
- Then open the design tool.
An afternoon of this can save a quarter of rework. We have not seen it fail to pay off.
Worth remembering
In four lines
- Write the argument before you draw the screen.
- Three plain sentences is enough. Long documents get ignored.
- If three people give three answers, keep writing.
- Arguing about words is cheap. Arguing about builds is not.
Questions we get asked
Is this just a requirements document?
No, and that is on purpose. A requirements doc lists what to build. An argument says who it is for and what to leave out. It fits on a sticky note, so people actually read it.
How long should this take?
An afternoon for one screen. About a week for a whole product. If it is taking longer than that, the disagreement you found is the real work.
What if people disagree?
Good. You found the problem before anyone built anything. Disagreement in week one is cheap. In week nine it is not.
Read next
Working on this yourself?
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