Weekly Blog #6.5
Alright so here’s something from a few weeks back. I remember when we were reading Shirky’s “Cognitive Surplus” he talks about how an idea will almost always seem more “obviously good” to the founders and designers of a service than to its potential users.
I’m reminded of the numerous times that the internet has trolled online polls and surveys.
A few years ago, the Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC) held an online poll to determine the name of its newest Antarctic research vessel. While the vessel ended up being named the Sir David Attenborough (in honor of the voice of BBC nature documentaries), the original winning submission was “Boaty McBoatface.” Caught between the immense amount of public pressure (of course the story was shared all across the web) and the risk of undermining their own reputation, the NERC decided to name a smaller research sub on-board the ship the “Boaty McBoatface.”
Point is, while it may have seemed like a good idea to get as much public input as possible to name the vessel, the founders of the competition probably would have re-designed the competition as a submission pool rather than a contest. With this point in mind, Shirky also talks about how we can never know how the users will interpret an idea. We can only predict how users will act with our resources. However, spending all day thinking of every possible outcome would be an immense waste of time.
It is important to put thought into how something should be received — there’s no denying that. But Shirky also says that at some point it is much better to solve problems as they arise rather than try and outthink the public. You manage to maintain forward direction and you can grow as community because of it. Surely, the NERC gained a lot of public attention because of this poll and they managed to avoid a PR disaster.