A few years ago at Facebook, our team set out to “simplify sharing” across Reels, Stories, and Feed. We wanted one unified sharing experience with the same tools, the same privacy settings, and the same flow. 

It sounded like a dream brief: strategic, transformational, the kind of challenge senior designers live for. We staffed some of our best on the project, but despite their drive and talent, they kept thrashing. The ideas they generated weren’t feasible, broke other parts of the system, or failed to address deeper user needs. In a way, their seniority unintentionally expanded the work to match their talent, turning into an expensive, time-consuming exercise in over-design.

We eventually realized that each format had evolved its own logic and audience expectations. Users already understood how to share within those mental models. Unifying them wasn’t simplifying - it was breaking something that worked. We had picked a problem that sounded ambitious but wasn’t actually valuable.

When we narrowed the focus to smaller, tangible wins like aligning audience privacy settings across formats, everything changed. We moved faster, reduced engineering complexity, and actually improved clarity for users.

The lesson stuck with me: senior designers love big, systemic challenges. But ambition without validation can easily result in lots of thinking but, little impact.

Now, when I see a “transformational” idea, I ask three questions:

1. Have we validated the problem?

2. Can we break it into smaller, high-value pieces?

3. Are the right people working at the right altitude?

Ambition still needs boundaries. The best design work lives where vision meets restraint.