improve

Act of enhancing or making better in terms of quality, value or usefulness. This can be by making ideas, objects or processes more desirable by adding or removing components. The term can be also be applied to people as well, via methods such as performance reviews which are meant to try and improve an employee in some manner.

I learned this one from Joe Kraus. Merely measuring something has an uncanny tendency to improve it. If you want to make your user numbers go up, put a big piece of paper on your wall and every day plot the number of users. You'll be delighted when it goes up and disappointed when it goes down. Pretty soon you'll start noticing what makes the number go up, and you'll start to do more of that. Corollary: be careful what you measure.

• Be Intellectually Honest
• Understand Your Users