Someone Designed That Terrible Parking Lot

Someone actually designed that terrible parking lot you're circling right now.

Narrow entrances, no clear route to your store, a spot so tight you have to suck in your stomach to open the door. You've been in a lot like this. That mix of frustration, mild danger, and annoyance as you circle for a spot or hunt for the way out.

Many years ago I was in the back seat of a car with two Dell colleagues, driving through a lot laid out in a crisscross pattern with no clear right of way and no sightline to oncoming cars. Our driver assumed he had the right of way. Someone perpendicular to us assumed the same thing. Their car plowed straight into the side of ours. I saw it coming and threw myself to the other side of the car just before impact, avoiding the glass that shattered everywhere.

Here's what almost nobody thinks about while fuming in a lot like that: someone designed it, and believed they'd done fine. That lot will sit there for 50 years. Tens of thousands of people will be mildly furious every time. Some will have accidents, like I nearly did. None of that shows up on anyone's numbers the day it opens.

But it shows up eventually. Customers quietly park elsewhere. The strip mall empties out. Trace it back far enough and it started with a few thousand dollars saved on the wrong engineer, or a few weeks skipped getting it right.

This is the same story behind almost every bad website or product I've seen. Quality is invisible until it isn't. In my experience, it's worth planning for it like the ROI depends on it. Because it does.

What's the "parking lot" in your product that nobody's gotten around to fixing?