A long, long time ago this guy named Newton came up with laws regarding motion. The three laws are:

I. Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.
II. The relationship between an object's mass m, its acceleration a, and the applied force F is F = ma. Acceleration and force are vectors (as indicated by their symbols being displayed in slant bold font); in this law the direction of the force vector is the same as the direction of the acceleration vector.
III. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

These three laws are universally applicable to every movement that occurs on Earth. But, what if they are also applicable to other things? Like, application or web development? No, it couldn’t apply there – or could it? This could actually help improve communication with your engineers since they love this type of crap!

Law #1: Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.
In lay man’s terms this states that an object in motion will stay in motion unless there is friction. We’ve all seen this before. You roll a ball across a carpet and it only makes it so far because of the friction that the carpet generates against the ball. Web/Application Development use: your project will never get done on time unless you provide force behind getting your deadline met.

Law #2: The relationship between an object's mass m, its acceleration a, and the applied force F is F = ma. Acceleration and force are vectors; in this law the direction of the force vector is the same as the direction of the acceleration vector.
In plain English this states that an object traveling in one direction will continue to travel in that direction unless another force is applied. In Web/Application Development this is called scope creep. It’s the never ending addition of “must haves” that the application needs which ends up being so far away from what you originally started with that you have no idea what you are now working on.

Law #3: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
This law is pretty self explanatory. And, probably the most appropriate. Actually, this is the law that set me off on writing this post. It’s the idea that for everything you build into an application you should also address the opposite functionality. If you are able to add information, you should also be able to delete that same information. If you can navigate to one page, you should be able to easily navigate away from that same page. If there is an open button, there better be a close button.

I leave you with the situation that caused this observation. It distinctly applies to Law #3. Final QA had come and gone and our application was released in BETA internally. I sent a note to our developers regarding the templates housed within the application. I had developed several mock templates that were of no good to anyone except the QA team and I wanted to remove them from the functioning app. When I inquired how to delete, the designers responded “We didn’t build in that functionality.” So, I can create until the cows come home, but I don’t have the ability to remove any of the stuff I create.

So, I ask you, how do Newton’s Laws of Motion/Design apply to your projects?