Work was having a competition to name our new meeting rooms… Here’s what they sent, below is my submission.
The office move is fast approaching and among the many new features of the office there will be 12 client-facing meeting rooms.
We would like to give each of these rooms a name with symbolic meaning, so we need your help to come up with a theme and 12 corresponding names that relate to our overall business / industry. An example is provided below to help you get started.
Theme: Metals
Meeting Room Names: Gold, Silver, Iron, Copper, Aluminium, Lead, Zinc, Tin, Nickel, Platinum, Titanium, Tungsten
From: Mark Colless
Sent: Friday, 24 July 2009 3:59 PM
To: Meeting room name competition
Subject: Meeting room name competition
Theme: Logic
Names: Meeting rooms 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 & 12
Abstract:
We’re often challenged to come up with new and inventive ways of naming or branding items that perhaps don’t require such complexity. Baker’s (2004) Simplicity essay opens with the statement: ‘Most philosophers believe that, other things being equal, simpler theories are better’. The ‘SB1 meeting room name competition’ appears to be an attempt at creating what Maeda (2006) would describe as a ‘counterpoint of complexity’; he argues, ‘Without the counterpoint of complexity, we could not recognize simplicity when we see it’. This essay will argue that meeting rooms should retain a number, and refute the necessity of creating a complex, convoluted method of categorisation and organisation within something that should in fact remain ‘simple’.
Isaac Newton (1687) remarked ‘…for Nature is pleased with simplicity, and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes’ – this statement has reverberated throughout the ‘Rules of reasoning in philosophy’ and forms the basis of our argument to ‘keep it simple, stupid’ and use numbers, not names, for our meeting rooms.
Duffin (1998) eloquently states:
‘Insights and ideas that occur to us when we encounter the raw material of the world—natural phenomena like the behaviour of genes, or cultural phenomena, like texts, photographs and artefacts—must be ordered in some way so others can receive them and respond in turn.’
Consider the example theme provided (metals) and the corresponding examples of meeting room names: Gold, Silver, Iron, Copper, Aluminium, Lead, Zinc, Tin, Nickel, Platinum, Titanium, Tungsten.
Using Duffin’s logic, we are attempting to order these ‘in some way so others can receive and respond it turn’. The metals example appears to have a motive and idea however, lacks an organisation structure. Maeda argues ‘organisation makes a system of many appear fewer’. Thus, a list of metals (or any other theme), for room names presents an organisational issue:
‘…in the long term an effective scheme for organization is necessary to achieve definitive success in taming complexity. In other words, the more challenging question of “What goes with what?” needs to be added to the list.’ (Maeda, 2006)
Apply the above argument to the metals theme and we are now dealing with an additional layer of complexity. How should these seemingly ‘simple’ names be assigned to a given room?
While the obvious choice could be to assign this alphabetically (e.g. meeting room 1 = Aluminium; room 2 = Copper, etc.), we may also view this scientifically, that is, based on their atomic number within the periodic table of elements: therefore, we are now faced with meeting room 1 being assigned the name of Aluminium, as this has the atomic number of 13; meeting room 2 is now assigned to titanium (atomic number 22), the next element in our series, and so on. It is interesting to note that the periodic table of elements provides a ‘useful framework to classify, systematize and compare all of the many different forms of chemical behaviour’ (Wikipedia, n.d.), which may satisfy Maeda’s desire ‘in taming complexity’.
A capitalist (aka, an investment banker) would argue that the room names should be assigned based on the value of the material. Now, meeting room 1 is assigned the name of ‘platinum’, with room 2 deemed as ‘gold’, and so forth. One could argue that the client, meeting in the ‘Tin room’, is of less value than those in our ‘Gold room’. This of course, presents an issue to the Client, especially if they’re sensitive. Oh, there’s the neo-capitalist movement too, where we’re asked to assign equal share of what’s privatized (Abdul-aziz, 2008).
When looking at this conundrum from a user experience perspective, we’re confronted with the following International Standards, which define usability (Usability professional’s association, n.d.):
1. “[Usability refers to] the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use.” – ISO 9241-11
2. “Human-centered design is characterised by: the active involvement of users and a clear understanding of user and task requirements; an appropriate allocation of function between users and technology; the iteration of design solutions; multi-disciplinary design.” – ISO 13407
The notion of assigning a name to a room, when a number would suffice, lends weight to the ‘extent to which a product can be used… to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a… context of use’. We are over-complicating a simple product. Using room names may also present issues within our technological domain: compatibility issues with ‘names’ versus ‘numbers’ in a company’s new ERP implementation required the organisation to rename all their buildings and rooms, thus conforming with the software system requirement for ‘numbers’.
We have viewed simplicity, and the issues around complexity, from academic, philosophical, scientific and usability perspectives. Although diverse, each subject matter area contends that simplicity is not achieved through complexity. Churchill (n.d.) argues ‘However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results’; this rule should be applied to the meeting room naming problem, and logic should prevail: use numbers.
You must log in to post a comment.