The Misplaced Moggy Methodology
I saw an advert along the street for a lost cat on the way to work this morning - it looked something like this:
Now, it's not for me to upset whoever lost the cat, but I don't think they have much of a chance of anyone reporting a sighting of the kitty. Here's a few reasons. 1) Unless the cat actually looks like a silhouette in real life, noone will know whether they've got the right cat. Is it a black and white cat? Maybe, but there's no way to tell for sure, as there's no textual description of Billy. 2) Cats rarely respond to their name, so telling everyone it's called Billy is a bit pointless. 3) What cats don't like to have their tummy tickled?
This kind of relates to some of my thoughts regarding project management and design, which I can now coin as the 'misplaced moggy methodology'. It's a weird example, but the above poster goes to show why you should never leave it up to someone emotionally involved in a project to handle any aspect of its design. While it's clear the person has affection for the cat, they haven't shown any form of understanding as to their target audience, or what the audience requires to be able to help return the cat in one piece, as essentially their objectivity and thoughfulness about what needs to go onto the poster for maximum effectiveness is clouded by their emotions. They're busy thinking about their missing cat, and the fun they used to have tickling its tummy, whereas your average joe won't have a clue what to do with the information, as it doesn't help them identify the missing cat. This concept of keeping emotionally (and almost always, financially) involved people away from the design process can apply to many aspects of design, from visual design, all the way through to information architecture.
Note, while I believe people with little understanding of design and development process should be kept away from becoming too involved, it's only the right thing to do if the designers involved have a clear understanding of the clients goals (which should be gathered through rigorous requirement gathering sessions - more than one is always required to search out unmissed issue which will without a doubt crop up later if you're not careful). In our example, if the clients' goals were to a) Show a very basic impression as to how the cat looks, and b) tell everyone what the cats favourite recreational activity is, then for sure this poster was a success! Unfortunately, I would hazard that the aim of the poster was to a) give a detailled description of the cat, and b) explain where it was last seen / lost, in the hope someone has spotted the cat. As you can tell, we're a long way off our goals.
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