[Sigia-l] Smackdown: Edward Tufte vs. Don Norman

[Andrew Boyd]

Karl Fast wrote:

>
>Shortly after starting a new job, I wrote a brief document, maybe
>ten pages, outlining the project that I had been hired to run.
>
>The CEO returned it to me saying, "I want this in Powerpoint. Until
>you have distilled this down to a series of bullet points, you
>obviously haven't thought the project through carefully enough and
>found a way of explaining it to other people."
>
>
>True story.
>  
>
Karl: I've had this happen in two different Australian government 
departments... it was phrased more along the lines of "We need to 
present this to the management team. Write a proposal, give it a good 
executive summary, and then put it into a 10 minute PowerPoint slideshow 
so that we can discuss it on Monday afternoon". We gave them what they 
wanted.

Just on this thread generally - Stephen King wrote in 'On Writing': 
"Write to your audience, everything else is bullsh*t". If the 
organisation who are paying my fee want a PowerPoint slideshow, that is 
what they get. If they want a design wireframe in Visio, that is what 
they get. If they want a report written in Applix Words, that is what 
they get. You may see a pattern emerging here :) Meet and exceed their 
expectations, and they will love you, or at least, pay you :)

These tools and many others have obvious flaws - but if you have a 
choice between convincing the client management to take on a new tool, 
or take on the project that you were engaged for, I think that the 
responsible choice is to convince them to take on the project. You can 
perhaps convince them to change their tool choice later. Or not.

Cheers, Andrew

-- 
___________________________________________
Andrew Boyd	andrew at friendlymanual.com
http://www.friendlymanual.com
"Do not ask me why I follow my heart,
ask yourself why you do not follow yours."
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