That's Atwood's Duck[0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality?Reposting#Re...
> I knew some game developers who put one or two glaringly bad visual choices in each milestone deliverable so the publisher could say "Change X!" and they feel like they'd made their mark.
> That left the rest of the build mostly unscathed from input from the publisher. As I heard it told it was a fairly successful approach.
David Siegel in Secrets of Successful Websites (1997) called them "neck bolts".
You’d be surprised how often this works - especially when there’s a wide discrepancy of expertise between the person doing the work and the person approving and/or paying for the work and the latter feel compelled to put their stamp on the work.
That left the rest of the build mostly unscathed from input from the publisher. As I heard it told it was a fairly successful approach.