3 ms·
I don't know who told me that this is a common thing among designers but it does ring true to me: The designer described how every time they had to show a draf
by alkonaut 4y ago
I don't know who told me that this is a common thing among designers but it does ring true to me:
The designer described how every time they had to show a draft for a stakeholder such as a client or manager, they polished their design and then added some obvious design flaw like making something clearly off-center that should have been centered or similar. Then when they show their initial design, the manager says "Looks good but make that thing centered properly".
If the design had been flawless, the manager would find something else to object to, which would invariably make the design worse. So showing off the imperfect design leads to the perfect outcome: the manager or customer gets to feel like they contributed to the design but the design stays the way the designer intended.
- throwaway744678 4y agoI first saw that idea mentioned in a (deleted) 2010 StackOverflow thread [1]. [1] http://archive.today/EeAw7 http://archive.today/EeAw7
- mananaysiempre 4y agoThis trick was used against Soviet censors as far back as 1968[1]. [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062759/trivia?item=tr1788197 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062759/trivia?item=tr1788197
- toyg 4y agoThis is one of the Laws of Consulting, iirc, and it applies to anything, not just design: find something for your counterparts to object to and hand it to them, so that they can feel empowered. More broadly, it's just political management of assemblies. Most governments do the same with controversial legislation: attach some wildly-outrageous clause to something slightly-less-outrageous, focus opposition on that, then strike it out. You then have the space to pass the bulk of it, which was your real objective all along, while claiming you "listened".