Comments on: Props From Scott Berkun on Selling UX

By: olga-lednichenko-nesher-israel

olga-lednichenko-nesher-israel — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 21:03:47 +0000

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

By: pjsherman

pjsherman — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 20:20:14 +0000

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.

By: Scott Berkun

Scott Berkun — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 21:52:50 +0000

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...