We’ve been talking this week about the little things in design, those small pieces that must come together to create the big experience. When they go AWOL, customers get frustrated. As I wrote on Tuesday, no hardware; no bookshelf.

Yesterday, Paul mentioned a few things designers could do to prevent or mitigate the damage from missing parts. In today’s post, I want to draw attention to his second white-hat solution: using standardized parts in designs.

There are a lot of non-standard parts floating around today’s designs: strange battery types; odd Scandinavian screws; hacky code. These may allow the designer more freedom (or just make their job easier), but they take freedom away from the end-user.

If a customer can’t wait for the company to respond with a missing part, they should be able to go to the store and quickly get a replacement. Whenever possible, using standardized parts instead of that 15/16? septagonal bolt is bound to save the day even when your company can’t.

But standards alone aren’t enough. It is possible to use standardized pieces that customers can’t understand and/or easily replace at the store. I’m talking about proprietary standards.

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I spent Monday griping about those little bags of screws that come with Target DIY pressboard bookshelves and their like. I also intimated then that the (if not flatly unethical) lame strategies behind them have a couple of lessons to teach us all: Wordpress template factories, real estate agents, Etsy store proprietors, and big three automotive companies alike. As promised:

Be generous

Send me an extra screw, you jerks. (Image via.)

If you make design and logistical decisions using a mentality of maximizing profits, the logical conclusions will all have zero tolerance for error. Case in point the bag of hardware: There is no doubt that sending exactly the correct amount of hardware is the most cost-effective option for these companies, which is why that's what they do. However, when the factory screws up, it costs them huge, leading to frustrated customers, employees, and balance sheets. If they had just planned to throw an extra washer in every bag, they wouldn't have any of these problems.

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