The Back-of-the-Dresser principle in Design
Suppose you want a new wooden cabinet for your home. So you hire a carpenter. You provide all the wood and nails and glue and panes of glass that would be required for the cabinet construction. You show your preliminary design to the carpenter, and they understand what you’re going for.
Before starting work though, you of course ask what the cost of this entire project might be. Since you’ve provided the raw materials, the only cost would be the labour charge for the carpenter. And he quotes 300 dollars. Now, you know that a cabinet of such size and design would roughly be around 300 dollars, but you remain adamant that you would not give anything more than 200 dollars. The carpenter agrees.
The cabinet is made and put up in place.
You use it for a few years, but as soon as you start piling up more stuff into the cabinet, leaning on the back, the rear wooden panel develops cracks.
In this piece, we’ll be looking at a very interesting thing called the Back-of-the-dresser principle.
Returning to the story, as you see cracks developing on the rear wooden panel, you bring the cabinet out of its place to examine the back — and you are surprised to see that the carpenter had not provided any structural support for the back panel — its just half an inch of wood nailed into place clumsily.
As beautiful as the front and sides and internals of the cabinet are, the back — which no one would be able to see once put into place, was compromised with.
Now, this probably was meant to happen all along since you did not pay the full amount that the carpenter deserved, but that’s a different story. What happened here, with the back panel of the cabinet, is exactly what happens in many other designs.
People often do not give as much effort and attention into designing things that will generally be hidden from view.
This, is wrong.
All components of a design, be it easily visible or not, should be held to the same standard of quality. And this, is the Back-of-the-dresser principle.
The mark of a craftsman designer, or developer, is when they apply consistent quality of work to areas of the design, which are not ordinarily visible — to all aspects of the product.
You might ask — why would it be important to pay such attention to trivial details?
Well, these things — as tiny as they may be — reflect the passion and care that you put into your work. They reflect whether you’re just another amateur, or a seasoned craftsman.
Use this principle in all aspects of work — it will improve your impression a lot.
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