At some point in every product’s life, a familiar tension emerges: do you keep polishing what you have, or admit that the whole thing needs a deeper rethink? It’s rarely a clean decision. Incremental improvements promise continuity and low risk, but only until they don’t. And starting over can feel liberating in theory, yet terrifying in practice — a blank page is both possibility and consequence.
The Case for Incremental Gains
There’s a quiet wisdom in improving what already works. Most products aren’t reinvented in dramatic bursts; they mature through slow, steady refinement. A pixel moved here, a workflow smoothed there. These kinds of changes respect the habits users have already built up. They keep the risk contained, the disruption minimal, and the resource demands sane. And when the underlying design is still sound, these small steps compound beautifully: the product becomes clearer, faster, easier — without ever forcing anyone to relearn their way around.
Incrementalism shines when feedback is pointing to surface-level friction rather than foundational flaws, or when timelines and budgets rule out sweeping change. It’s the craftsperson’s path: you shave, adjust, tune. You keep the essence intact.
The Case for Starting Over
But sometimes the cracks run too deep for sanding. Products age — not because anyone did anything wrong, but because their assumptions eventually drift out of sync with reality. You look under the hood and realise the structure isn’t built for what the business now needs. Years of “just one more tweak” have created a patchwork of mismatched styles, awkward flows, brittle components. What used to be a coherent system is now a collection of polite compromises.
In those moments, starting again isn’t indulgence; it’s honesty. A fresh design can realign the product with its purpose, modernise its language, eliminate the debt that’s quietly draining time and energy. It’s not cheap, and it shouldn’t be taken lightly, but sometimes it’s the only way to build something capable of scaling with the next chapter.
Recognising the Tipping Point
The real skill is sensing when incrementalism stops creating value and starts just delaying the inevitable. You see it when new features feel duct-taped onto the old ones, when usability complaints point to structural issues rather than polish, when the cost of maintaining the current system has quietly crept past what a considered rebuild would require. Designers and developers end up working around the design rather than with it — a sure sign the centre isn’t holding.
A Practical Way Forward
Before choosing a path, it’s worth stepping back and diagnosing what’s truly broken and what still stands strong. User testing, prototypes, and candid stakeholder conversations can reveal whether you’re dealing with rough edges or foundational fractures. Neither approach is inherently superior; each serves a different kind of problem.
And if you do take the reset path, do it deliberately. Carry forward the lessons of version one, communicate clearly with users, and release changes in a way that respects the learning curve ahead. A redesign should feel like a thoughtful evolution, not a violent rupture.
In the end, this dilemma will always be part of the designer’s work. Products live in a constant state of becoming, and our job is to decide — again and again — whether they need another careful tune-up or a full, fresh start. Either path is valid, as long as it leads to a better experience for the people who rely on what we create.