The Pigeons Solved the Right Problem

Yesterday I made a mistake I’ve seen hundreds of product teams make. My three-year-old spotted it immediately.

After his vaccinations, I decided he deserved a special afternoon. So I did what any self-respecting product designer would do: I researched.

I compared playgrounds, checked reviews, found a family café nearby and even looked at the weather. By the time we left the house, I’d designed what I was convinced would be the perfect afternoon.

It lasted about twenty minutes.

The slide was too hot to touch. The café’s play area was closed. I’d already spent €14 on Spider-Man fries because, at that point, cancelling the plan felt less painful than admitting it wasn’t a very good one.

So we gave up.

We sat outside a random bar while I mentally prepared my post-mortem.
Then a flock of pigeons landed.

My son spent the next hour chasing them around the square, laughing hysterically and declaring it the best afternoon ever.

The pigeons had accidentally built a better experience than I had.

What struck me wasn’t that pigeons are better than playgrounds.

It was how quickly I’d stopped trying to make my son happy and started trying to justify my original plan.

Nothing makes us defend a mediocre solution quite like having invested time in it.

I’ve seen product teams do it.
I’ve done it myself.

We mistake effort for evidence.
We polish.
We optimise.
We iterate.

Meanwhile, the user has already wandered off chasing pigeons.

Yesterday, my son didn’t need the perfect afternoon.
He just needed to forget he’d had injections.

The pigeons solved the right problem.

I was still improving the wrong solution.