(Click picture to see full-sized)
I just bought the girls the movie Ratatouille this weekend. Included on the DVD is a Pixar short called “Lifted”, a funny little bit about two LGM’s (little green men; aka aliens) practicing their abduction via tractor-beam skills on a sleeping farmer.The smaller LGM, in training to operate the tractor beam system, is quite daunted by the hundreds and hundreds of identical little switches, makes some hilarious errors of commission (as well as one big error of omission), and finally becomes frustrated, with hilariously slapstick results.
Worth seeing. Follow this link to watch a low-res version.
Hopefully this won’t read too much like a Twitter post…I’m on my way to Beijing China to speak at and attend User Friendly 2007, the annual conference put on by the China chapter of the Usability Professionals’ Association.
The title of my talk is “Changing Processes and Cultures: Setbacks and Successes On The Road To Building? Customer-Centric Product Teams.” I’ve posted a slightly longer version of the talk to UsabilityBlog at this URL, if you’re interested in looking at it. (The longer version is what I presented last week at? the Atlanta? chapter meeting of the IASA, the association for software architects.)
The talk is a three-year retrospective on the process of incorporating user-centered design at Sage Software in North America. Here’s the blurb from the conference site, if you want more information about the talk:
We in the user experience field know that user-centered design and usability activities have the most positive impact when they’re carried out early in the product/service ideation, design, and development cycle. And our stakeholders – those colleagues in neighboring disciplines such as product management and product development – are often eager to become more customer-centric, and would like UX practitioners to help achieve this. However, our colleagues, and more importantly our executives, don’t always know just how disruptive it can be to successfully integrate UX processes and people into the organizational culture.
This presentation will describe the setbacks and successes experienced by the UX group at Sage Software as we drove the adoption of user-centered design and user research processes across multiple product teams in North America over the last three years.
Enjoy. -Paul
