@Joan, that is the zone of suck, indeed.

@BB, in the software business we sometimes call this “throwing it over the wall”.

@Anike & Monkey, nice observations. I’m sure I listen to 20% of my music collection 80% of the time, spend 80% of my time around 20% of my friends, and so on. Re: over promising & under delivering, been there with some product groups that shall remain nameless–wasn’t pretty.

In any case, perhaps your next article should highlight the perils of over promising while under delivering. I’m pretty sure that the combination of these ideas represents the Holy Grail of user centered design.

I was wondering if this model, Pareto’s Principle, would hold in Cameroon. A part of me is not sure it would, but it might. I also wonder about the idea of the “zone of suck.” I suspect it can be avoided by simply scaling back expectations, doing a good job of course but realizing that perfectionism can only go so far and then it becomes a “deadly zone.” I apply this idea to my poetry. I get to a place where I decide and say, “This poem isn’t perfect, but it is good enough. Done. Moving on.”

I am sure, you and your co-workers will get to points where you can just say, “This looks pretty good, works pretty good, let’s run with it, let’s not beat ourselves up. Thanks for the hard work, everyone. If anything goes wrong, we’ll just put our heads together and do our best. Yeah. Do our best and let it go.”