When you're working with smart people, there's never a shortage of good ideas. Every project spawns dozens of them. The problem with good ideas, though, is that they're hard to ignore. Read
There's no doubt that good ideas power innovation. Without good ideas behind them, most projects are bound to waste a lot of man-hours getting nowhere fast. But good ideas are only half the battle. The other half? Well, it certainly isn't lasers.
Whether you're working at an agency crowded with talent or freelancing out of an apartment crowded with cats, good ideas tend to come in droves. There's no stopping the flow of ideas when passionate people get to work on interesting projects, but the river of possibilities we create is often too deep to cross. It can end up drowning our hard work at every turn, diluting our product until we're left with something that barely resembles our original intent.
When we're working for clients who expect a return on the investment they're making in our work, spot-on layouts and intuitive interactions don't have a lick of value if the product we've created isn't actually solving anything.
"So what the hell is the other half of the battle?" you ask? Staying focused. When there's a plethora of excitement over the good ideas we've developed, it can be very hard to focus on the best idea for solving the problem at hand and ignoring the rest of them.
It's human nature to latch on to the latest and seemingly greatest product of our creativity and defend it at all cost. Blinded by the shininess of a new idea, even the best designers in the world have difficulty staying focused on exactly what it is they're trying to accomplish with a project. But this is a challenge that must be overcome, lest we forget the problem we're trying to solve and instead focus on raising our baby to a mediocre, watered-down reality.
It's a simple question, but one that is asked far too infrequently in meetings where everyone is just trying to add their two cents and promote their ideas: "What's the point of this project?" It's quite possibly the most important question a designer can ask, as the answer should govern every decision we make.
Stay focused on the point. Stay focused on solving the problem. That fancy design stuff? It's just a matter of putting in the work. The hard part is letting go of all of the cool things we could do and focusing on what we need to do. When the light bulb of a new idea flashes on in your head, take a deep breath and ask yourself two questions: what's the point here? Does this idea help us accomplish it? If you can do that, you've already won the battle. No lasers required.