This is why it's nice to get people's preferences vs thoughts about preferences. Preferences aggregate, thoughts about preferences do not. If one designer says "Readers like narrow columns more, everyone knows that." and another says "I like reading narrow columns.", I'd give the person speaking about readers in general more weight (even with them going the same direction). But, if 100 designers spoke for all readers and 100 designers spoke for themselves, I'm giving more weight to the second group. Hearing 100 preferences is more valuable than hearing one idea, 100 times.
