How to build the thing [Part 6: Don't be too noticeable]
Success needs to show itself in outcomes, not applause.
Earlier in this series, I talked about how to make the system vanish. That was about how to reduce friction so that people weren’t thinking about using a system and instead started to just build the thing. It was about the experience of making - flow, intuition, how it feels to do the work.
This principle is closely related. But it’s not about usability. It’s about success at an organizational level. And how to avoid the temptation of deliberately raising a system’s visibility once it starts to work well.
Performative success
If you’re part of a team that works on a mature, successful system, you won’t be surprised to hear that those systems are often undervalued. There’s no drama, there’s no need for constant attention. They’re ticking along just fine.
There’s a temptation to compensate.
We publish adoption reports. A quarterly report. Maybe a newsletter. Roadmaps and presentations that celebrate the system itself more than what it’s enabling. And that visibility risks becoming the proxy for value.
It’s completely understandable. We’re all very aware that many organizations overlook the systems that work best. “We’ve got our design system, we don’t need to keep funding the design system at the same level.” It’s a genuine risk. Visibility can be more legible to leadership.
But it also risks drift, and risks the system being more about theatre than infrastructure.
Quiet systems, loud outcomes
The strongest signal of a system working isn’t that teams talk about it - it’s that people talk about what they built with it.
We want to hear things like:
“That was easier than we’d expected”
“We shipped faster than we thought”
“Everything just kind of worked”
Nobody is mentioning the system by name. That’s a sign of success, not a failure of visibility.
Measure outcomes, not attention
This is uncomfortable, because it’s often cited as the core metric in system-building work.
Adoption is a vanity metric.
Adoption tells you people are touching the system - not that the system is helping them do better work. But it’s easy to count, and it can protect funding.
High adoption can coexist with frustration, workarounds, and quiet resentment. A forced mandate that pisses teams off as much as it helps them.
Low explicit adoption can coexist with deep impact. Using the values and principles of a system can often be overlooked or unmeasurable.
That’s not to say that we shouldn’t measure metrics, but we should be looking for the right signals.
Reduced time to ship
Less rework
Fewer handoffs or repeat iterations
Faster onboarding
More consistent outcomes
Not to flatter the system, but to validate it.
The best systems don’t compete for recognition. They’re there to create the conditions for everyone else to succeed.
Doing its job quietly
There’s a particular sense of quiet satisfaction in building something and then stepping back. Letting it fade into the background from a visibility perspective, and letting the work that it facilitates speak for itself.
It’s also really hard to do. Because we’re proud of the systems we built. And we want to nurture them, and protect them.
But if what you’ve built is really getting people to the thing then the most generous and powerful move is to stop standing in front of it waving your arms for attention.
If it’s entrenched and unnoticeable, you’ve probably done it right.
Further reading
Bell, Sarah, et al. ‘Invisible’ infrastructure is the background to our modern lives. Pursuit, June 2023.
This is the final part of a six-part series on building in a way that serves real human outcomes.