team thinks deeply and carefully about the best way to interact with users to get the answers they need. The team engages in ethnographic observation, open-ended questions, and experimentation—all of which are grounded in an abiding respect for the views and values of the end user. The user is of vital importance, and is treated that way by all concerned.

Photograph by Steve Payne

Now contrast that experience
with a typical interaction with
the client or business team. The
design team does a great deal
of work, generates insights, and
comes to the table with a set of
ideas they’re excited about. What
happens then? Rarely is the inter-
action a truly collaborative dis-
cussion that improves the design
and pushes it forward to market.
No. In some cases, the designs
are killed dead on the spot. Or
they are watered down by busi-
ness teams obsessed with proven
market data and bottom lines.
And very often, the designs are
weakly accepted and then left to
molder on a shelf, with no inter-
nal champion to advance them.
In the wake, the design team
dismisses the client as unworthy
and ineffective, chalking up the
failure as one of client execution.

But look at the interaction from the point of view of the business team. To them, the discussion with the design team looks an awful lot like a standard “buy-in” session. That is, the business-team members are presented with a fait accompli and asked to buy in to the recommendation. With little room to move, the options typically are: Reject it outright, accept it but do something to mitigate the damage, and accept it publicly but work privately to keep it from ever seeing the light of day—all tried-and-true processes for dealing with folks who want your sign-off

March + April 2010