From: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/02/13/the-iceberg-secret-revealed/
Customers Don’t Know What They Want. Stop Expecting Customers to Know What They Want. It’s just never going to happen.
Instead, assume that you’re going to have to build something anyway, and the customer is going to have to like it, but they’re going to be a little bit surprised. YOU have to do the research. YOU have to figure out a design that solves the problem that the customer has in a pleasing way.
You know how an iceberg is 90% underwater? Well, most software is like that too - there’s a pretty user interface that takes about 10% of the work, and then 90% of the programming work is under the covers. And if you take into account the fact that about half of your time is spent fixing bugs, the UI only takes 5% of the work. And if you limit yourself to the visual part of the UI, the pixels, what you would see in PowerPoint, now we’re talking less than 1%.
If you show a nonprogrammer a screen which has a user interface that is 90% worse, they will think that the program is 90% worse.
If you show a nonprogrammer a screen which has a user interface which is 100% beautiful, they will think the program is almost done.
The dotcom that has the cool, polished looking web site and about four web pages will get a higher valuation than the highly functional dotcom with 3700 years of archives and a default grey background.
When politics demands that various nontechnical managers or customers “sign off” on a project, give them several versions of the graphic design to choose from. (The illusion of choice)
When you’re showing off, the only thing that matters is the screen shot. Make it 100% beautiful.