SND – significant noticeable difference

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I remember the concept of just noticeable difference from college psychology.It's the minimum change in some stimulus that can be detected by a person. Thinking about agile development processes and where to spend precious resources led me to the other end of the spectrum: the signifiant noticeable difference (SND).

You should only take on a new task if it will make a significant difference from the current state of things. Of course the word "significant" itself is sufficiently vague, but it conveys the appropriate scale at which you should approach your thinking. When I look back on a lot of the work I ended up doing over my career, too much of it was on the JND side of the spectrum. I'm doing my best at my new job to work in the SND space.

So, that's not to say that details aren't important sometimes. But I would argue the details that are important, are in fact significant. If design polish is an important part of you vision (and as I designer, I argue it should be), then those misalignments and other formatting bugs are significant. They will detract from the overall perception of quality if they aren't fixed.

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