There’s an interesting article over at UsabilityWorks from a little while ago, essentially about design by committee. Situations where a consensus is needed for even the most minor decision are very difficult — particularly when everyone has a different (sometimes political) agenda.
This sort of environment leads to two main things happening: either 1) decisions end up being taken in a hurry by some random person who it falls to in the end, because “we’re hitting a deadline now and we just haven’t been able to get everyone in a room to point at the same bit of paper” (just for the record, I’m a BIG fan of everyone pointing at the same bit of paper) or 2) decisions not being taken at all, potentially critical issues not being addressed because achieving consensus is just too difficult.
What often occurs in these situations is as Matthew predicts: “the person who speaks first/loudest is the authority”. For some this is a fantastic opportunity and they build their career on the great decisions they have made at critical moments. For others it is disastrous — they are not the right person to make the decision, due to lack of experience, misunderstanding of the issues, etc. Projects driven on consensus and designed by committee are made or broken in those critical moments when someone without authority (for essentially no one has authority) makes a decision. The person who speaks loudest is not necessarily the best person to make the decision, as the guys at OK/Cancel have previously illustrated.
Admittedly, sometimes this setup is needed. If you have a number of stakeholders, each representing a given role/viewpoint, then everyone being involved in the design may be essential. It often falls over, however, when those involved have not clearly declared their roles and discussions become fights because no-one understands where anyone else is coming from. The real problem is when you have a team which is not a team at all — it is possible for a team to design something, even a group can do so. But never a committee.
As Elly previously touched upon, what you end up with is a situation where any idea that doesn’t cause a fight is a Good Idea ™. There is a similar concept in Software Engineering called Groupthink — where any idea the group comes up with is by definition great, because the group came up with it (yes, ladies & gents, psychosis and circles all in one concept…).
Now, the question really crystallizes down to the following: do we want to design “OK” things? Surely any critical design decision should evoke some sort of emotion from people? I think this is where Apple have got the right idea. They design beautiful things, things that people feel strongly about. You don’t just buy an iPod or a Powerbook. You WANT one. If you’re Simon then you lust after one for months and it is a major event when you finally order one.
I want to design things that people love, hate, adore, detest, recommend, ignore. I’d rather the strength of feeling were there than just mindless acceptance or apathy. Maybe I’m not the only one, but you wouldn’t know to look at a lot of the things produced out there.
Comments (5) Permalink
December 23rd, 2003 at 10:16 AM
A major problem with committees is that they dilute responsibility. This means that not only do they tend to make bad decisions, but they can also in some circumstances make decisions that entail bigger risks than any of their members would be happy with if they alone were responsible.
I think that making sure that people take responsibility for their decisions is important, but it’s also hard. For example, in one project with which I’m familiar, the client’s manager refused to take responsibility for anything. His position was that the current test user (a secretary) should make all decisions. This meant that whenever the developers presented a range of options that included ones that would make the product easier to maintain in future years and ones that would make it easier to use now, the user always chose the latter. The correct choice from the point of view of the whole business was almost certainly the latter, but obviously they weren’t considering any timescale longer than a year or two – this system was the third one developed for the same task in five years because of arbitrarily changing requirements and a high turnover of programmers!
In the end, the developers started making these kinds of decisions themselves, because it certainly wouldn’t be the secretary’s reputation that was tarnished when the product failed to meet the organisation’s long-term needs.
December 30th, 2003 at 10:41 PM
And if you’re me, you’re very very jealous of Simon and can’t wait another few months until you’ll be able to afford one of the damn things. *drools*
December 30th, 2003 at 10:43 PM
Sorry for separate comments, had to drool over Macs first.
I’ve just had an interesting thought provoked by your post. The European Union is essentially and example of Design by Committee. I wonder if I could make a PhD out of that…
December 31st, 2003 at 4:56 PM
Rich, I completely agree with what you’re saying about the dilution of responsibility! I think some of this is cultural as well — in that some companies encourage people to take responsibility for all they do, others to cover themselves whatever decisions are taken. I think the latter attitude is unfortunate and leads to some insane decisions taken just because everyone can be equally to blame … and therefore no-one fired or held to account properly.
Mili, I think you could definitely get a PhD out of the EU being an example of design by committee … and explain many of its failures through this. The current issues with the constitution seem particularly relevant to this argument and also touch on Richard’s point — the most sensible proposal I’ve heard about the EU Constitution so far is that it should be written as a real meaningful constitution … and then that all member countries should have a referendum where the options are Yes (for the constitution) or No (which means retraction from the EU as well). Utter decisive brilliance.
Thinking about it, I should think that you and Elly could both get doctorates out of design by committee … in different academic areas, but nevertheless.
December 31st, 2003 at 7:58 PM
Maybe I could finish my PhD thesis using design by committee too – who’d like to work on Chapter Three?
I think that this sort of analysis could be extended far beyond the European Union too. All the attempts to establish new international orders by general peace conferences after major conflicts – whether at Augsburg (after the Habsburg-Valois wars), Westphalia (Thirty Years’ War), Utrecht (wars of Louis XIV), Vienna (Napoleonic Wars), Versailles (WW1), San Francisco (WW2) or Paris (Cold War) – could be considered the product of committees. So too could the various congresses and conventions of the American and French Revolutions.
It might be interesting to compare these to national or international constitutions produced by fiat, such as those of the Napoleonic states, Japan’s Co-Prosperity Sphere, the abortive Nazi “New Order” or the Soviet Union. Or, for that matter, to extend the discussion to Sparta and other ancient states.