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Prototypes replace documents
The old routine was thinking in a document, translating it into a presentational artifact, and moving the team in that direction. The new routine is mocks, not docs, and prototypes, not docs. Something people can try and interact with, or better yet results from an A/B test along with a reason to go in a direction, communicates far better than the doc itself.
Hundreds of docs still get written, but for the writer's own thinking and no longer for other people.
Sharing a doc at 70 percent
Shared early, a doc still works as the underlying artifact for collaboration. A manager's rule was to write a doc to 70 percent completion and then take it to the people whose buy-in is needed, to get it from 70 to 100. Very few great people want to engage with a perfectly polished idea, because new ideas bounce off it, while rough edges give them something to polish alongside the author.
Why do rough drafts draw better feedback?
Ed Catmull, a co-founder of Pixar, wrote in his 2014 book Creativity, Inc. that early versions of Pixar's films are ugly babies: awkward and unformed. Pixar's Braintrust meetings gather directors and story leads to give candid notes on those early versions. The group has no authority to order changes, and the director decides what to do with the notes.
Why does a prototype beat a description?
David Kelley's design firm, which merged into IDEO in 1991, built its method around making rough models early. Making a model forces decisions about details that a written description lets a team skip. A prototype can also be handed to a stranger, who reacts to the object instead of to the author's explanation. Kelley's firm designed the mouse for the Apple Lisa in the early 1980s.
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