CHAPTER 12 The Design of People
Over the past few years, I’ve had the pleasure (and pain) of discovering
a whole new side of humans. By applying the work of folks like the
Brafman brothers, Ramachandran, Eagleman, Gigerenzer, Edwards,
Ariely and many others to the world of design collaboration, I’ve been
able to navigate through many tricky situations, and have also been
able to develop a whole new set of seemingly counter-intuitive rules of
thumb to help me along the way. To list a few (and most of these are from
experiences that I haven’t specifically mentioned in this chapter):- Don’t try to educate clients and stakeholders about design. Rather,
spend time priming them to realize that it’s not their domain. - Never conduct a design review in a conference room with all stake-
holders present together. Social conformity studies have firmly
established that this approach is destined for failure. When you
succeed, it’s simply because statistics can be forgiving. - If your client demands multiple versions of a design, you will im-
prove your chances of a quick sign-off by creating three versions:
two that are similar (the one you would like the client to pick needs
to be better), and another that’s obviously the worst and dissimilar
to the pair. That said, you might be better off firing the client. - Getting even great designers to collaborate will generally produce a
design that isn’t as good as that produced by an individual great de-
signer (unless, those designers can really function as one; rare, but
certainly possible). This is because you are attempting to converge
independent realities and average independently great visions. - Trying to convince someone of something that’s contrary to his or
her existing belief generally worsens the situation. You have to look
for a subtler solution to deal with the individual. - In most circumstances at work, praise and positive reinforcement
are far better motivators than monetary or other in-kind payments.