The consultation curse

I think it was Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert cartoon strip, who said that the word ‘consult’ comes from a contraction of ‘to con’ and ‘to insult’. Yesterday, I came across an archetypal example of what he meant, courtesy of Brent Council. They have launched an online survey regarding a new logo and messaging for their waste collection service.

Here are the first two questions:

Have you had enough time to think about those? OK, here are the next two questions:



There are 17 questions.

This is the last one:

One final question – does this survey make you feel that carrying on living is important, or not important?

It so accurately sums up everything that is wrong with ‘consultation’ that I wondered if it was a parody.

I suppose it should be said that consultation can be a useful and necessary thing, especially when you present people with a limited range of viable options that have meaningful differences between them.

More often, consultation is a hollow, life-sapping, time-wasting distraction for people who are too lazy, lily-livered and feckless to make even the smallest decision for themselves. (I offer no opinion on which camp Brent Council falls into – I’m just describing two ends of the scale here.)

It doesn’t help when the questions you ask are almost literally meaningless. Take those first four questions. Precisely how bad would a logo have to be to make you feel that recycling is unimportant? “Yes, I’ve seen the data, I understand we’re creating mountains of waste for future generations, I get that we’re destroying natural resources unnecessarily… but ever since I saw that logo, I can’t help feeling it doesn’t really matter.”

I haven’t even mentioned question 16 of the survey, which asks you to choose between 15 (fifteen) very slightly different copy messages. They might as well include an extra question asking people to come and sit at their desk for eight hours a day, Monday to Friday, and pick up their shopping on the way home.

Like reality television, consultation exercises are usually a carefully manufactured gesture towards openness and involvement without actually being anything of the sort. Scott Adams had it right - they're not just neutrally pointless, they actively express a thinly veiled contempt for their audience. Like so many online surveys, this one is hosted on SurveyMonkey. You can't help feeling the clue's in the name.

Thanks (I think) to @daisymcandrew who pointed this out on Twitter yesterday, retweeted by @66000mph

Comments

[EwanLeckie]

So agree
Crowd sourced design. YUCK!
What daft questions. Bet it turns out a mess, but to be fair to the public didn't look like they had much of a choice.

[Pete Clark]

Depressing isn't it? My company is currently moving towards carrying out more research and user testing before, during and after project launch. We have found that this brings to light useful insights and genuine problems which may otherwise have gone unnoticed.

I believe that well structured, considered research can always improve projects. Inane surveys like this only undermine those who are doing things properly. They make the research phase look like a waste of time.

[Robert Hempsall - Information Designer]

I don't have too much of a problem with the concept of crowdsourcing for opinions, but only when you're putting out a limited number of quality options. The approach in the Brent survey seems to have been the output of a matrix combining A+B, A+C, A+D, A+E, B+C, B+D... and so on.

P.S. Dilbert has spoken more sense in one strip than many business books do in a hundred pages.

[Graphic Designers]

This is so typical of local councils. Rather than get a team together who know what they are doing they put it out to the public so there's no comeback on them when something utterly amateur is churned out. When did we stop trusting professionals?

[KEB]

The thing is, I've BEEN that person who does that consulting. It's not because they don't know how to do it. And it's not "crowdsourcing," which kind of sounds like laziness. Public sector agencies do it because they HAVE to be seen to be working with their stakeholders, the local residents. And if you don't think so, try being the press or communications officer when something *doesn't* get consulted on!

Having said which, I agree... I don't work in those jobs any more.

[Nick Asbury]

Thanks Katy, that’s an interesting perspective on it. I agree this is a case of consultation rather than crowdsourcing in the strict sense – they’re not actually asking anyone to design a logo, although the questions are so detailed they come pretty close. (As Robert says, it’s effectively an exhaustive matrix of every possible option.)

I also agree that consultation is politically useful on many occasions – in fact, I believe this is its primary goal. It’s less about improving the creative product and more about steering it through the political process of getting accepted.

That can be a smart thing to do in the right hands – it helps you win people over to a brave idea that might otherwise be rejected. But in the vast majority of cases, I think it’s used for the opposite reason – to avoid blame for a half-baked idea that everyone knows isn’t going to work.

By the way, I notice the Brent survey is still up and running - can't wait to see the results...