[Sigia-l] 1 > 3?

[Terence Nelan]

Hi everyone,

One place where I think it can be great to create more than one option
is internally. 

It can sometimes provoke extremely creative solutions to determine in
advance that you will design two or three options for a given problem.
Often the first one is the best, but forcing yourself to consider other
alternatives can be extremely productive -- a little piece of concept
two or concept 3 can really enrich concept one... . Nobody says you have
to show them to the client, however. 

Terence

-----Original Message-----
From: sigia-l-bounces at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-bounces at asis.org] On
Behalf Of Listera
Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2005 3:42 PM
To: SIGIA-L
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] 1 > 3?


Thomas Vander Wal:

> I fully stopped the "options" approach about
> four years ago, mostly out of lack of resources.

Yes, clients are entitled to get whatever they want, *as long as they
pay for it.*

In a shoe store the marginal cost of trying out 3 shoes (shelf space,
time,
etc) is close to nil. So we don't think thrice about asking for
variations. But nobody in a restaurant asks for 3 'options' on the same
dish, taste all and just keep one to finish off *for the price one.*

And yet clients think nothing of asking for 3 'options' for the price of
one when it comes to digital artifacts. What's missed here is the
glaring fact that this is self-defeating. It's impossible for the same
designer, say, to give equal (or even close) attention to 3 distinct
options. What usually happens is that *all* 3 options, including what's
likely the leading/eventual option, suffer.

Of course, there are sometimes perfectly legitimate reasons why 3 or
more options need to be tried, but more often than not, the notion of
forced options in the name of risk reduction is false economy.

Ziya
Nullius in Verba 


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