Experience Matters

DBC. Embrace it now.

What’s DBC? DBC stands for Design by Committee. Did you just shudder?

At Critical Mass, we use a form of design facilitation called Rapid Design Labs (RDLs) as a collaborative method to work with our clients. They help drive out requirements and ideas for solutions and they are great for building trust among the collaborators. I’ll be writing more posts about design facilitation and our RDL method here in coming weeks.

I was about to start a Rapid Design Lab last week when one of the participants complained that he “didn’t believe in Design by Committee”. On the face of it, it seemed like a legitimate concern. After all, everyone knows that DBC is bad, isn’t it? In typical hindsight, here’s what I should have said. Simply, DBC is inevitable on any project with more than two people. DBC is simply human nature. We need a method to embrace it.

If you design or create any kind of solution for other people, you’ve participated in some form of Design by Committee. If it doesn’t happen while your client is briefing you, it happens during the design process. If it doesn’t happen during the design process, it happens when you receive feedback. If it doesn’t happen during feedback, it is bound to during one of the many stakeholder presentations you’ll be expected to give.

We all pretend that we can control DBC. We do it by attempting to specify how our clients brief us or give feedback. We try to control it by defining specific roles and responsibilities and attempting to educate others about their place in the process. Some of us play the emotion card, pouting when others don’t participate the way we believe they should. And how successful are we in all this? Not very. It’s time to accept that we can’t expect people to offer specific opinions limited to certain things and delivered at certain times.

Let’s be more realistic. Let’s acknowledge that our clients have challenges that they need our help with. For example, they may understand the trials and tribulations of their business better than anyone, but still find it hard to articulate their needs and requirements. We should also acknowledge what they have to offer. Clients want to participate in finding the solution and have good ideas that deserve exploration. Finally - let’s also acknowledge our clients’ rights. They have internal client and external customers to satisfy and have the right to respond to what we create.

So how do we engage our clients more openly, collaboratively and productively? I think we need to start by finding ways to embrace DBC. We also need to manage the associated risks. Without a solid approach, we can become victims’ of DBC’s worst problems:

* Time wasted on circular debate
* Mediocre solutions produced through negotiation rather than ideation
* Lack of attention to a more strategic view of the problem
* Too much focus on individual tactics

This is where the practice of design facilitation becomes critical. What is design facilitation? Like other forms of traditional group facilitation, design facilitation employs meeting techniques and group exercises to help groups create potential solutions and agree on the best way to proceed. The idea isn’t new - architecture firms have used design charrettes for years and IDEO’s Deep Dive process is a type of design facilitation (in my opinion). Now it’s time for digital marketing practitioners to embrace this practice.

Next time, I’ll talk more about what I believe are best practices in design facilitation methods.