[Sigia-l] Making the complex simple

[Listera]

Alexander Johannesen:

> Surely you can't convince a customer that a delivery A shouldn't be what the
> customer expect?

To cite the most recent example from my own life, I'm about to complete the
first phase of a multi-million dollar project for one of the best known
entities in the financial world -- very old, very conservative and very
traditional. Like they always do, they specified all sorts of documents
(print-oriented) in the contract. After they saw what I do and got
comfortable with it, I haven't handed in a single piece of (printable)
'deliverable'. We've been working on evolving prototypes and on-screen
interaction maps. Their expectations surely have changed. And, yes, I did
spend time on raising their expectations and occasionally countering a
request for "traditional deliverables," mostly by demonstrating the
advantages of focusing on design, as opposed to deliverables.

Again, I gained their confidence by initially showing them a few (expected)
elaborately designed flowcharts/wireframes/etc to demonstrate the point that
producing them wasn't the problem, their actual utility was.
 
> Umm, do you do a lot of government work? :)

No, I don't.
  
> Agree with that; most of the time 'complex' is a word we use when we
> haven't used our brain in the right way and we give in to the dark
> side. 

Complexity is often a matter of "I wrote a long letter, 'cause I didn't have
the time to write a short one" syndrome. Simplification is, of course,
infinitely harder than complication.

Ziya
Nullius in Verba