Outcomes over outputs

An outcome is what you achieve in the end—the actual change or improvement you make. An output is what you create along the way.

Think of outputs as the tools you use to reach your outcome.

As designers, we can get caught up in making lots of different things during the design process—so caught up that we might forget our main goal: creating something useful for our users.

This doesn’t mean we should stop making design materials. Instead, we should:

• Always ask ourselves why we’re making each thing
• Make only what we really need
• Keep our eyes on the end goal

At its heart, UX is about solving real problems for real people. Yes, we need wireframes, prototypes, and documents to help us get there, but these are just steps along the way, not the final destination.

A good question to ask yourself is: “What’s the least amount of stuff I need to make to solve this problem?”

Think about your past projects. Where are all those sticky notes, sketches, documents, and prototypes now? They probably helped you at the time, but what really matters is the final product that users can actually use.

While we need these materials to help us understand and solve problems, we should always check if they’re helping us move forward or just keeping us busy.

The things we make along the way are temporary; the solutions we create for users are what last.