‘Less is more’ or ‘the perfect end user’

Spring is trying to chase away the cold winter and where I live I can always tell the spring has really started by children playing in the playground that is in front of our house. Until last Friday. A playing ground committee thought long about the current playground, came up with several redesigns, organized a voting round and finally convinced the local government that the playground should be rebuild.

So Friday when I came home from work I saw the playground or what was left of it: swings, climbing wall and slide removed and all the wood chips that used to cover the entire area shoved into one huge heap revealing a sandy ditch. I remember thinking: “Why on Friday? Now the kids have to do a weekend without.” And in my mind I was already thinking about planning and communicating plans with customers in my daily job. Until my wife told me our youngest (4 years old) boy’s response when he saw the building pit: “Ooh, they have already finished it!”

And he was right. That same evening our neighbors’ kids attacked the playground with such vigor (and shovels, trucks and wheelbarrows) that I suddenly realized that the committee and the voting had been done by the parents and the local government and not by the end users, our kids.