Half-baked cookies 🍪
Half-baked cookies are not edible, they are not safe to consume.
But what about half-baked concepts or half-baked designs?
They are also not for consumption and definitely not intended to used as the final concept of the product. No designers would want to be known for delivering half-baked designs.
However, I think in some cases, it is actually necessary to deliver half-baked stuff. Hear my thought: Design is an iterative process. Assumptions, limitations, feedback & user-testings shapes the form of the design. There is no final product until it is shipped. Hence, it is actually okay to deliver half-baked concepts, because nothing is set in stone yet. By delivering a half-baked design concept (and by putting a clear reminder to your stakeholders that this is a Work in Progress), gives them space to share significant evaluation for the design & tackle critical flaws before too late.
Delivering half-baked stuff also help us, designers, to stop polishing things to make things pretty. There were times when I spent hours just thinking about where would I put the action button to make sure everything is aligned perfectly, and at the end of the day we scrap the idea and all my time invested in the action button goes to waste. The problem here is polishing a bad solution does not make it a better solution. Polished charcoal will still be charcoal at the end, what you want to polish are your rough diamonds.
So let them taste your half-baked cookies, dear designers.
Only with that, you can discover the secret recipe for the best cookie ever.