Just Do It: Quantity Leads to Quality
I found the following anecdote from Bill Buxton’s book “Sketching User Experiences” on Mike Arauz’s blog:
“A ceramics professor comes in on the first day of class and divides the students into two sections. He tells one half of the class that their final grade will be based exclusively on the volume of their production; the more they make, the better their grade. The professor tells the other half of the class that they will be graded more traditionally, based solely on the quality of their best piece.
At the end of the semester, the professor discovered that the students who were focused on making as many pots as possible also ended up creating the best pots, much better than the pots made by the students who spent all semester trying to create that one perfect pot.”
The quote demonstrates that by producing as much as you can, the quality of what you produce increases. With each pot created the students in the “quantity” group learned something new and perfected their skill. In addition, their creativity was not restrained by the thought of creating “the one perfect pot”. By being told that they were going to be graded on quantity they had more leeway to experiment and try new things. Here are three projects that reflect that same idea of focusing on quantity:
Rachel Hinman started her 90 Mobiles in 90 Days experiment on June 20, 2008 in which for 90 days she thought about, sketched, drew, and prototyped ideas for one mobile design per day. She documented her experiences during the 90 days on her blog.