Main idea

Faced with a contradiction between the dock and accounting, the product reflex is to design a new receiving screen. The first deliverable can be more modest: an interview guide for going to see the dock and accounts payable, which seeks to find out when receiving is actually entered, which discrepancies really matter for invoice reconciliation, which ones can be completed later and by whom, and what forms of workaround already exist.

This deliverable does not settle the contradiction; it prepares the material that may make it possible to do so. The tension, instead of being hidden, steers the research.

Why it matters

This avoids designing on an unsettled hypothesis while giving it the appearance of a solution. The interview guide turns an open contradiction into precise questions, which no screen does.

Nuances and limits

Postponing design has a cost: if the research does not settle the question, a decision will have to be made anyway, on material that is barely richer.

Open questions

• How many rounds of interviews does a contradiction justify before it has to be settled without evidence?