In studying guidelines and why they work or are ignored in organizations, it's important to consider who in general management supports them.
Fantastic guidelines without a champion are useless. Whereas even mediocre guidelines with high profile and proactive champions, are incredibly effective. So I'd argue how effective these things are, or are not, has more to do with how much support they had, than how good the actual guidelines were. Guidelines, however clever or insightful, are just recommendations. They don't have any power on their own, unless people are rewarded for following them by leaders in the organization. It's very very easy to have a fantastic set of guidelines that get talked about once in awhile, but have no discernable impact on what goes out the door. Sometimes in successful groups, the guidelines are created *after* the fact - they are used to capture the spirit of the organization for those who come later (I think the first UI guidelines from Apple were released several years after the first Macintosh - I'm sure someone on the list can confirm or deny :). -Scott Scott Berkun www.scottberkun.com -----Original Message----- From: discuss-boun...@lists.interactiondesigners.com [mailto:discuss-boun...@lists.interactiondesigners.com] On Behalf Of Livia Labate Sent: Tuesday, April 07, 2009 1:25 PM To: list IXDA Subject: [IxDA Discuss] Guiding successful product development Hi all, I am looking for examples of brand/product/company guidelines or principles that are/were truly useful to guide and direct product/service development (not just advertising and marketing messages). ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help