MECE

The concept of MECE is so fundamental to me that I am always surprised when people do not know of it, and do not practice it themselves. I would say 90% of my job is trying to simplify something through MECE so that it makes sense to everyone and is not overlapping.

MECE stands for “Mutually Exclusive and Collectively Exhaustive.” I like to think of it as making a list of something and making sure the list is full and right. This can happen in a taxonomy context where you want to make sure you have all of the terms that you need to create something (e.g. a list of everyone that works at the company). Or it could even be in the context of what users you are talking about (Why yes! The Developer is a user as well, because they use the system to do work a couple times a month, even though the others users do so on a daily basis!)

MECE comes up a lot when talking about navigation or taxonomy, but it also comes up a lot in UX contexts when talking about card sorts (which I have many opinions on, coming soon (TM)). I find that people always want to get things out quickly, and go FAST FAST FAST, which is fine, but MECE should not be sacrificed. Picking 1 thing to prioritize is great, but if you pick that 1 thing out of an incomplete list, the things that you miss and did not use for your analysis are going to bite you later on.

Take the time to get the full data/information set. Make sure none of it overlaps.

And, no, “miscellaneous” does not count. Do NOT bring that here. (You can ask the teams I have worked with, I have had WORDS with them)