Whenever designing a new process or a new system, we have a tendency to think of the desirable flow, the ideal path, the happy path, the path that will happen more often than others.
And to then stop at that.
It is our way of avoiding chaos.
However, things don’t break because the desirable flow didn’t work. They break, because when the desirable flow wasn’t applicable, nothing else worked.
Things break because we didn’t think behind the desirable flow.
That’s where chaos comes in.
If, instead of starting with the desirable flow, we started with chaos, we would experience a lot in a rather short period of time.
If we allowed chaos and not order, to drive our design, we would end up with a design far more capable of handling different situations.
To design the product that works almost always, start with chaos.
To design the life that works almost always, start with chaos.