![thumb](https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/cdn-origin/uploads/2012/06/thumb.png)
Having a refined user experience
![Screen Shot 2012-06-21 at 12.34.14 AM Refined user experience](https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/cdn-origin/uploads/2012/06/Screen-Shot-2012-06-21-at-12.34.14-AM.png)
The positive side of a refined UX
Leveraging the full brandBranding is a massive topic, and it is for this exact reason that it seems people feel the need work in this manner. They feel that if they are going to launch they should launch with everything their brand stands for, being built into the site from day one. The classic, “v1 should be feature complete” is something I’ve heard from managers frequently. And there is a good reasoning behind it. They don’t want their website to reflect that which they aren’t, and therein lies the travesty. We will get more into this in the cons section, but this can lead to serious feature creep. My motto is, if you are walking into a space where there are competitors that are branded perhaps more heavily than any other space online (think: Dropbox, or Apple) then you might want to seriously consider this, because in that case branding will be very important. Though, one can marry a lean launch with fabulous technology and a nice brand, all in one — which we will also discuss later. Receiving immediate interest
Another positive when it comes to the refined and polished roll-out is that it may attract more users up front due to the fantastic design and full service care given to the entire product. At least, that is what we love to assume. Realistically though, it can be a barrier to entry as well. I have seen users who feel a product is too big or has too many features for them to get any feeling of ‘want’ when it comes to using it, and they will bounce off the site in less than a minute. Happens all the time, and is all too sad honestly. I hate to see entrepreneur's or even manager's ideas get sucked down the tubes because of the all too frequent feature creep. Although it does happen, it still doesn’t keep entrepreneurs from feeling that the interest will be increased ten fold should they complete their product entirely before launch. This is a big one. Being feature complete
If you do make it to this stage and are living in this camp, then you are more than likely feature complete at this point. We have spoken about this a bit so far in the above sections, but here is where it gets interesting. A lot, and I mean a lot of start-ups feel they need to be feature complete before they can charge, or make an impact for that matter. I am not saying that there isn’t some merit to that argument, but I think that it has been exaggerated over the years. From my point of view and from what I’ve seen over the years you can simply ask if users would pay for a product before fleshing out the entire thing. Now, let’s say you were gung-ho about being feature complete, and you did indeed want everything in. Well, you could launch a very minimal version of each feature. Something that represents the features in question, or perhaps even videos of the ones missing. Keep in mind there are ways around being feature complete without actually being there.
The downside of a refined UX
Feature creepThis is an all-to-common failure when it comes to the polished UX and feature complete approach to launching a start-up. And this is what we call a situation called the death spiral of feature creep. The managers or owners will feel the need to add more and more features to the product as you complete others, until there is literally nothing to do but add more features. It is a never-ending cycle in some cases, and especially in cases where you don’t have a rigid set guidelines or specifications established. Waterfall development
![Waterfall](https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/cdn-origin/uploads/2012/06/Waterfall.png)
Quick rollouts, and the lean start-up
![Screen Shot 2012-06-21 at 12.49.39 AM](https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/cdn-origin/uploads/2012/06/Screen-Shot-2012-06-21-at-12.49.39-AM.png)
The upside of the lean start-up
User feedback![Screen Shot 2012-06-21 at 1.18.13 AM](https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/cdn-origin/uploads/2012/06/Screen-Shot-2012-06-21-at-1.18.13-AM.png)
One of the best things about doing product development in a lean fashion is that you will often find that your iteration cycles are much quicker, and in some companies they ship code over 20 times a day. There is a lot of philosophy behind this, for instance how at Facebook when a new engineer is brought on board they are given 5 bug fixes in their welcome email on their first day. A lot of the reasoning behind doing things like this is that if you have your system set up in a way that it breaks every time a new employee comes on board, then it's not them it's your system that's broken. Agile development
Agile development is in essence going from one small thing to the next as quickly as possible. You then move from each sprint to the next sprint, which is often defined by a user story and that is simply a user on your site who wants some bit of functionality. It is very similar to testing in Rails or other framework, as you are only doing as much as you need and nothing more. One can save a massive amount of time by doing development in this fashion.
The downside of the lean start-up
One small negative that may happen when you are a user of the agile development and lean startup system, is that the site may change over the course of time. Now, ideally this would happen because of a user’s request, but still it may be jarring to some users. So doing it with class and elegance is important. Especially if it is a product they care about. Don't uproot the core user-base of your product like Digg v4 did, but instead provide details on what you are doing and why, and if all else fails roll back. Always be sure to use something like git or subversion to save versions of your product. In fact, I do so as branches, so that we can always roll back if need be.In conclusion
If your startup is so technically advanced that it doesn’t matter, go with the quick roll out. People will care because of the technological change they are seeing. Though, if you are competing in a space with massive competition then perhaps a combination of both is best. In short, always do the best you can with refined UX, but do it in short agile bursts.Dain Miller
Dain Miller is a former Presidential Innovation Fellow at The White House, and mentor for developers at starthere.fm. He now works to lead engineering teams at a distributed media company. You can find him on Twitter @dainmiller or at his website
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