I think a lot about durability in the systems I maintain these days. Durability, to me, means maintaining continued functioning even in non-ideal or unexpected situations.
Durability is building around the increasingly common bot clicks on email links when designing scoring or activity alerts. Should we lower the weight of email engagement in our models? Is a click really what should dictate a nurture stream transition anymore?
Durability is accounting for adblock users when building heavily tracked digital experiences. What happens when none of our tracking works? Does the user still get where they need to go? Do we have a way to bucket that activity separately?
An ops friend of mine told me over coffee recently how he and his team like to turn requests for campaigns or system changes into literal storytelling. Where they walk through what should and what’s expected by the user, as a way of identifying the “What if’s” lurking behind a seemingly simple request. Usually issues arise when we only think about a problem from one angle – our own. Stepping into the shoes of the customer often reveals a whole other world of considerations. And designing for those is how you get to durability.