By Nishant Kothary CHAPTER 12There are several anchors hidden within this section: reviewing
designs individually isn’t feasible; providing written feedback is important;
design is often subjective; the big picture is more important than
individual features; “trust me”; and more.
Next up, a milestones section, but not just for various stages of design,
but for providing feedback as well.
Holding stakeholders to milestones for providing feedback is not a
new concept, but one we often stray away from because we generally
don’t know how to argue for it. The best argument is generally simple
arithmetic. The design timeline itself was extremely tight for Project Unify.
The design team had nine days (counting the weekend; this was definitely
a burn the midnight oil project) to produce the wireframes for the new site.
In comparison, the stakeholders had three full days to provide feedback. All
in all, this proved to be another excellent anchor, and also a way to control
scope.
Finally, the most important section: how to provide feedback. While
most of this section is process-oriented, the final bullet point — “Your
feedback must be actionable, rational and reasonable. In other words,
focus on specifics of the wireframes and not wishful/nice-to-have
things” — stands out. While it wasn’t equivalent to an explicit signature
(remember, Ariely had subjects physically sign an honor code before they