Easy-to-process things feel truer, safer, and more appealing.
More quotesEvery review needs a blue duck: one harmless thing for somebody important to remove so they can feel the work bears their fingerprints.
It is a clever trick. It is also a slightly grubby confession that the process cannot cope with human beings wanting agency. The creative plants a sacrificial flaw, the client heroically spots it, and everybody goes home believing collaboration occurred.
The urge itself is real. Executives rewrite clear sentences because approving them feels passive. Buyers cherish configurable software after moving one setting. Workshop participants defend a plan more fiercely once they have shifted three sticky notes and renamed a box. People value authorship, even in teaspoons. Pretending otherwise turns feedback into an ownership contest. But deceiving reviewers trains everyone to confuse visible meddling with useful judgement—and one day the duck survives while the good idea gets shot.
Design participation honestly. Give reviewers a real trade-off: speed or richness, breadth or memorability, consistency or local freedom. Say what evidence has fixed and what remains open. Ask where their knowledge should alter the answer. Sometimes the proper contribution is approval, and grown-ups ought to tolerate that. If a process requires planted mistakes to make stakeholders feel necessary, look beyond the artwork. The relationship is too childish to say who decides what.