Writing 1 min
The 2 a.m. standard
Most software is judged at launch. The software that matters is judged at 2 a.m. by someone who can't read the sign.
Launch day is the least representative day in a product's life. Everyone is awake, everyone is watching, and the happy path is the only path anyone walks.
The day that matters comes later, at an hour nobody planned for, when a person with no one to ask opens the thing you built. Did it load on a bad connection? Did it speak their language? Did it need an account first?
I've started designing for that person on purpose. It changes what gets built first: offline states before onboarding, the emergency screen before the settings page, the translation before the animation.