Props From Scott Berkun on Selling UX

by Paul Sherman on March 19, 2010 · 3 comments

in Experience Strategy, Organizational

Scott Berkun recently posted a thought-provoking article “How UX Can Get Anything They Want.” It was a good and short read, but what really made it special for me was that he called out my and Dan Szuc’s writings and presentations on selling UX.

Said Scott:

The biggest skill gap the UX world has are advocates, translators, and persuaders, people who are not afraid to sell and convince others on the value of their work.

This lack is something that I’ve noticed in myself and others, which is why I took very conscious steps in my career to become an advocate for UX and not just a UX practitioner.

And as I mentioned above, it was great to see Scott recognize our work in this area in the “See also” section at bottom, where he called out these content pieces from Dan and I:

I would also add that Adam Polansky of Travelocity and RedearthIA contributed a fantastic chapter to “Usability Success Stories” that covered how UX practitioners can be “natural liaisons” between disciplines. (This is the book I conceived of and edited back in 2006.)

Tagged as: selling_ux

  • http://www.scottberkun.com/ Scott Berkun

    The curious thing is why this fairly old idea (specialists need to persuade) has such a hard time gaining traction among the UI/IX/HCI community.

    And oddly, it's seems really hard to sell the UI community on the point of view you offer.

    Do you have any theories as to why this is?

    I did a study of sorts on designers about why they fail to explore this question among the design community. But I have thought about doing a similiar thing for the usability/HCI side of things:

    http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/2008/why-design…

    • http://www.usabilityblog.com/ pjsherman

      Thanks for dropping by UsabilityBlog Scott. If I had to venture a guess, I think the reluctance to persuade stems from my contention that most of us are utterly convinced of the rightness of our ways. After all – and this is a good thing – most of us stumbled onto this field and found it a fantastic lens through which to project our ethical expression onto the world. UX is a place to be a force for good. How awesome is that? Answer: quite awesome indeed. So why *wouldn't* everyone see our opinions as correct?

      I think our moral certitude gets in our way. In other words: UX'ers belief in our own rightness is quasi-religious. There's no need to persuade others of our rightness; we know we're right. And if they don't believe us, frak 'em. Only there's that pesky little issue of who's cutting the checks….hmmm, I better tow the line and try to convince those who labor in the darkness of not knowing UX, even though they're little more than inmates running the dark asylum…I think you can see where I'm going with this.

      My bottom line advice to our field would be very similar to what my Jewish mother from Queens often says: hey UX'ers, get over yourselves. We don't poop roses. Not everything we do is an expression of our moral superiority. We don't see the big picture. And we don't know what it's like to be on the hook for the revenue projections for a product. In other words, we should have a little more empathy and broaden our horizons a bit.

      I've made these points before; check this article out for a slightly more poiished version of this argument: http://bit.ly/a2Xwux

      Thanks again, Scott.

  • http://olgalednichenko.blogspot.com/ olga-lednichenko-nesher-israel

    you are right and the reasons – me thinks are:

    [1] appreciation on either side on what's involved and what's the incremental impact

    [2] lack of a common language – between the client and the designer ie,.

    regards
    olga-lednichenko-nesher

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