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Validating and measuring ideas before falling victim to sunk cost fallacy
We need better ways to gauge which ideas are worth pursuing, better methods for eliminating ideas and better metrics for validating them in the market.
Remember Project Briefs?
The project brief is law.
In my early career, that’s what I had been told. If a brief came across my desk that was unclear, imprecise or missing details, the client needed to take a hard look at what they were asking for before I could even begin to work out ideas. We’d complain about how their objectives were so far-reaching, that their audience included everyone, and that there were uncountable ways to execute on it — which meant there’d be countless comps and revisions to try and get inside the clients head.
We’d send them away to work out their ideas and to solidify better plans on their own, with instructions on how to write better project briefs in the future.
When they did have their ideas worked out, we’d never get things in front of users, mostly building design by consensus. Launches happened with little fanfare from actual users, with lots of stakeholders patting themselves on the back. Was success ever measured? It was rare and what metrics were tracked were spun to show their successes.
I’m so glad things have changed.
