The business value of polished products

“Let’s polish this up!”

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POLISH: A word often thrown out in conversations about design, sadly just before the product goes out of the door. 

But polish can’t be an afterthought! It must be at the core of our teams, a commitment to excellence, and to “care” from the beginning. The highest degrees of craft and quality are in the spaces we can’t see. That unseen effort to perfect every hidden aspect is what elevates products from good to great!

Sadly, no OKRs or performance incentives can convince someone to care about quality in this context of craft and polish. Most companies talk about deadlines and other incentives, but never: “Is the experience great?” or “Are we meeting the quality bar?” What we need, are people who care inherently. Sadly, they are a (massively) rare commodity. 

Why is that? Because polish as a notion of quality is rarely quantifiable. Sure you could track its impact on revenue and engagement at times, but often it’s just a matter of whether someone loves it. 

Are users saying they bought our product because they found the experience so good? Do you get such messages from your users?

“Hey, I really loved the way you built this!” 

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What the video on why well-crafted products are expressions of care and dedication—featuring design and product leaders of 3 organisations who value design, experience and polish in everything they do: Stripe, Figma and Linear.

https://stripe.com/in/sessions/2024/craft-and-beauty-the-business-value-of-form-in-function 

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