We support an open debate
Translation: "openly debate" as much as you like; we'll do what we want to do anyway.
One of the most successful IT projects I was involved in was deploying a new website for a university department. I gave them a choice of light green vs dark green for the site template and asked staff to vote. 90% plus responded to the survey and commented to me subsequently that the site looked great (dark green won), and that the "consultation" I did with the staff demonstrated I truly cared about the user experience. That care obviously flowed through in terms of how good the site looked and its functionality. By the way, this department included Information Technology under its umbrella, and taught web design in some of the courses. (I mean, the site was fine, fairly standard Dreamweaver templates, a bit of javascript for menus, clean and navigable, nice but not ostentatious header images - typical early 2000s)
I managed not to smirk too much at the fulsome compliments on my "consultation" and its impact on the results, and we all went on happily thereafter.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
