Applying the anchoring effect to design practice.Heres a nutty idea: designing terrible solutions makes you a better designer. I know that sounds backwards. Designer portfolios share only the most pristine of examples. And were taught about efficiency and time savings. Best practices tell us to move fast, fail fast, and get to good solutions quickly. So why waste your time thinking about the worst possibleoption?Just a few weeks ago, I was working with my team to reinvent a complex workflow. We were struggling a bit. Stuck in the land of today. Instead of jumping straight into good solutions or what might be better, I provoked the team by asking to produce a deliberately badversion.What happens if you design bad solutions onpurpose?What happened next surprised us all. As we looked at what we thought would be terrible solutions, we discovered they had some redeeming qualities. Elements that seemed obviously bad at first glance turned out to solve problems we hadnt even identified yet. Our bad solutions were teaching us about the problem space in ways our good thinking never could. Plus, as we intentionally worked towards a bad option we better understood what did and didnt work for theuser.That terrible solution acted as a powerful filter for what it means to be good. The critical point was that we knew we were creating terribleoptions.The Single OptionTrapMost of the time we think were exploring when were really just optimizing minor variations of one good solution. We brainstorm solutions that are all reasonably acceptable (and eerily similar), tweak them until theyre slightly better, then pick the least problematic (cheapest) option.Butif you only explore acceptable solutions, how do you know what makes them actually good? Whats the definition of good? Something thats good is only good if its in juxtaposition to something thats bad. And if bad is the complete absence of a solution, then the bar is set prettylow.Its like trying to understand fast without ever experiencing slow. You might think youre ripping down the highway in your eco compact car, but you have no reference point to judge againstuntil a hot rod nearly blows your mirrors off as they pass you. The false efficiency of jumping straight to the right answer leaves us designing in avacuum.One of my cherished design mentors used to say, Its not design if you only explored one option. Lets push it a bit further: its definitely not great design if all your options exist in the same narrow band of acceptable.Without contrast, were making design decisions based on assumptions and feeling rather than understanding. Were optimizing within fake constraints instead of discovering the actual boundaries of our problemspace.The Psychology: Anchoring Effect inDesignTheres a well-documented psychological principle called the anchoring effect. When people make decisions, the first piece of information they encounter becomes an anchor that influences every subsequent judgment. Show someone a high price first, and even a discounted price seems good. Start with a low number, and everything else feels expensive.Without context, any option is subjective.In design, we rarely think about what were anchoring to. We start with existing patterns, competitor solutions, or our own assumptions about what good looks like. But what if we intentionally anchor our perspective to something horrible?When you establish a genuinely bad reference point, something magical happens. You start to pencil in defined boundaries. You can finally see the difference between acceptable, actually good, and incredible because you understand what completely broken lookslike.Without that bad anchor, good enough becomes your ceiling. You dont push further because you dont realize how much room you have to improve. But once youve introduced your partners to some truly terrible solutions, the path to breakthrough thinking becomesvisible.The same option in context suddenly seems different.The Method: Systematic Questions for BadDesignThis isnt about randomly making things worse. Its certainly not about shipping bad solutions either. To be productive with terrible design takes intention. I have a few helpful questions that help reveal the edges of any problemspace:What would make this experience completely unusable? Dont just think hard to use. Think impossible. What would make users give up immediately and neverreturn?What would hide the value so users never feel it? Even if your solution works perfectly, how could you ensure users never realize its helpingthem?What would utterly destroy user trust? What design choices would make users question your credibility, your motives, or your competence?What could make this impossible to find or access? How would you ensure the people who need this solution never discover itexists?What would make this take 10x longer than necessary? Not just slow-painfully, unnecessarily, infuriatingly slooooow.What would make users feel stupid or frustrated? How could you design something that makes people question their own intelligence?When I work through questions like these, I typically keep it low-fidelity (and encourage my teams to do the same). Quick sketches with a marker, pencil, or favorite pen. Keep them like rough wireframes on a whiteboard. The goal isnt to build terrible things. Its to understand what makes things terrible. So, dont spend too much time here, but just enough to learn fromit.Boundary Discovery vs. Constraint AcceptanceEach terrible solution you sketch teaches you something essential about the shape of the problem. Terrible solutions (along with good solutions) help you feel the edges of the problem space youre interacting with.Most designers work within perceived boundaries. Things we think are true, but have to assume for lack of information. But until you push against those boundaries and see what actually breaks, you dont know which constraints are real and which are just assumptions to restore comfort in the world of design problem ambiguity.Theres a crucial difference between constraints (what you must work within) and boundaries (what breaks the solution entirely). Constraints are negotiable. Boundaries arenot.Bad ideas help you determine the line between good andbad.When our team reinvented that workflow in the worst possible way, we learned that the boundaries we thought existed for users were in a different spot. We found that changing input methods and interaction style wasnt as detrimental as we thought. We became less focused on what was on the screen, and more focused on productive ways for users to input their information.Youre not just making stuff when you explore terrible solutions. Youre surveying the territory youre designing within. Youre understanding the landscape so you can map it and navigate it with confidence.The Innovation ConnectionThis connects to something Ive written about before: what do stakeholders want from design? The gist is that in the business rush to eliminate risk and guarantee outcomes, weve made design practice sterile. Many times, design practice isnt used to solve problems or innovate, its used to reduce risk. So, naturally we avoid anything that appears risky or impossible to validate. Which means we also tend to avoid anything that might be a breakthrough hit.Risk aversion kills innovation because it prevents exploration of new ideas that exist on the edges of the solution space. Including ideas that might be perceived as bad. However, controlled exploration of bad ideas prevents accidental bad outcomes. Its a little like a vaccineexposing yourself to a small, controlled dose of failure builds immunity against larger failureslater.You cant push boundaries if you dont know where they are. You cant create genuinely innovative solutions if youre afraid to understand the fine edge between what works and what doesnt. The sanitization of design has made us allergic to anything that appears like failure, which is exactly what breakthrough thinking requires. Just think of Dysons 1,000s of prototypes for the bagless vacuum, or Edisons 1,000s of filament tests to produce a valuable lightbulb. They werent simply failing, they were systematically exploring what didnt work to understand whatwould.When you deliberately explore a lot of solutions, including the bad ones, youre not wasting time. Youre doing reconnaissance. Youre gathering intelligence about the problem space that will inform every subsequent design decision.Making It WorkTomorrowAt this point, I hope youre thinking about how you could get started with this. It doesnt have to be complex. Just startsimple.Next time someone brings you (or your team) a design problem, spend 7 minutes sketching the worst possible solution. Dont overthink it. Just grab a marker, pen, or pencil and draw something genuinely awful. I mean abysmal. Ask yourself those systematic questions (from above) and see whathappens.Try it as a team exercise. In your next ideation session, say, Before we explore good solutions, lets spend five minutes mapping what we definitely dont want. Youll be surprised what you discover in just a few minutes. Maybe you can even give the winner aprize?Jot down what you learn from terrible ideas. Theyre as valuable as your good solutions because they teach you about boundaries, constraints, and problem edges that good solutions oftenmiss.Build this into your exploration routine, not as an exception or luxury. Make it a standard part of how you approach unfamiliar problems or early exploration phases. Keep it low-fidelity and time-boxed, and position it as mapping the problem space rather than wasting time. Even 5 minutes is valuable.This bad exploration delivers maximum value when youre dealing with unfamiliar problems, complex user workflows, or situations where you need to communicate risk to stakeholders. Its less valuable for well-understood patterns or incremental improvements where the boundaries are alreadyclear.Remember: the goal is understanding. Youre not trying to create the final solution. Youre trying to understand the problem well enough to create a final solution that actuallyworks.Including terrible options helps you determine what the best solution reallyis.Embracing Productive FailureSo yeahthis is backwards from how we typically think. Designing terrible solutions to become a better designer feels like taking a detour through failure when youre trying to reach success. As you explore terrible solutions, you start building a backlog of what suboptimal means in a variety of situations. You fill your bag of experience with solution paths that tend to fail to solve problems in specific types of situations.Its a bit unintuitive: the fastest path to breakthrough thinking sometimes takes a journey through the wasteland of terrible ideas. Not because terrible ideas are good, but because understanding what doesnt work gives you clarity about whatdoes.Design isnt about avoiding failure. Its about understanding what success looks like. And success is made clear when contrasted with failure. When you map the boundaries of bad, the territory of good becomesvisible.Your next design challenge is an opportunity to test this. Take just 7 minutes this week and intentionally design something terrible. Sketch the worst possible solution you can imagine. Ask yourself questions that surface the most painful experience. See what it teaches you about the problem youre actuallysolving.You might be surprised by what you discover in the wasteland. And you might be more surprised with how fun itis.Why designing terrible solutions makes you a better designer was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.