Fill your trash can

The younger designer in me believed anything that didn’t ship was thrash. The older I got, I saw the gold in the garbage.

The 90% that never shipped wasn’t wasted—it was the runway for the 10% that did. It clarified what wasn’t working, aligned us on what was, revealed the limits of tech, and showed us what could actually ship without excuses. That “waste” gave us the gift of clarity and choice.

If an engineering team says they’ll ship everything you show, I doubt the design team. If leadership loves everything you present, I doubt the process.

Great design teams show more than they intend to ship—not to impress, but to make the team think.

These days, I ask candidates to show me the work that didn’t ship. That’s where the real story lies—the breadth of thinking, the influence on product direction, and their maturity around customer value.

The fuller the trash can, the better the product.