Universal Principles of Design, Updated and Expanded Third Edition

020 Brown M&M’s

The use of covert, embedded tests to verify that quality standards have been met.

Brown M&M’s borrows from a practice employed by the American rock band Van Halen. The band’s concert agreements had a rider requiring M&M’s as a backstage snack but noted in all caps: “WARNING: ABSOLUTELY NO BROWN ONES”. The band was initially castigated for being prima donnas, but it was later revealed that the rider was a quality control strategy. Van Halen had a complex and large stage show, with truckloads of heavy equipment and pyrotechnics. If the details of the contract were not executed precisely, the risks ranged from stage collapse to explosions. If there were no brown M&M’s backstage, the band knew that the promoters had read and executed ...