Today at work, another change came in.
Move this.
Relocate that.
Modify this.
Update the drawing.
Okay.
Then another comment came.
Then another.
And another.
At some point, I just stared at everything and thought:
What the hell are we actually doing here?
Are we improving the design?
Or are we just changing things every time somebody points at something and says, “Move that”?
Because apparently, once a comment exists, the automatic response is:
“Yes. We’ll change it.”
Why?
Doesn’t matter.
Was there something technically wrong with the original design?
Who cares.
Is the existing installation already acceptable?
Apparently that is not the question anymore.
Just change it.
And this is the part that frustrates me.
A change looks small when someone writes it in a comment.
“Relocate this.”
Five words.
Easy.
Except that relocation can affect a drawing.
That drawing affects a cable.
That cable affects a panel.
That panel affects something else.
Then two weeks later, everyone is asking why there are more revisions, more work, more rework, and more delays.
Seriously?
You asked us to change it.
And while I was getting annoyed about this, I realized I’ve been learning almost the exact same lesson in web design.
When I first started, I would look at something and immediately think:
Move this.
Make that bigger.
Reduce the spacing.
Change the layout.
Because it didn’t look right to me.
But now I’m starting to ask something first:
Why was it designed that way?
What was it supposed to do?
What problem was it solving?
What happens to everything around it if I change it?
And that made me realize something that seems ridiculously obvious now:
Different does not automatically mean better.
Yet somehow we behave like it does.
Someone asks for a change, so we change it.
Someone doesn’t like something, so we move it.
Then when the change creates another problem, we change that too.
At what point do we stop reacting and actually think?
That’s the part I want to change in myself.
Before touching something, I want to understand three things:
Why is it there?
What exact problem are we trying to solve?
And what else gets screwed up when we change it?
Engineering. Web design. Systems. Probably life too.
I’m not saying designs should never change.
Of course they should.
But at least give the change a damn reason.
Because a comment is not automatically a technical justification.
And a change is definitely not automatically an improvement.
Before you change the design, understand why the damn thing was designed that way in the first place.
Otherwise, we’re not designing anymore.
We’re just reacting.