Experience Strategy

User Experience Design: A Mini-Festo

by Paul Sherman on December 17, 2011 · 4 comments

in Design, Development, Experience Strategy, Product Management, UX And...

I’m on my way back from my company’s all-hands meeting.

After all the excitement and motivation the week inspired, I felt moved to write a UX mini-manifesto. A mini-festo, if you will.

Excuse any grammar or spelling issues; I’m composing in Evernote on my phone. I would love to hear my readers’ and followers’ comments on this post.

You’re an experience design practitioner. In your organizations, you should be responsible for:

  • Creating an inviting and well-designed initial user experience.
  • Designing and validating:
  1. Terminology and conceptual models that reflect our target user’ ways of thinking.
  2. Usable workflow and navigation.
  3. Clear, understandable and actionable page and view design. (I’m defining ”view” as an
  4. element of a page that conveys pieces of information to the user, such as a data display
  5. element).
  • Employing consistent visual design and use of design patterns.
  • Creating and maintaining access to and connection with the broader user experience components, e.g. community resources, documentation, etc.
  • Remaining consistent with brand.

Along the way, you also:

  • Collaborate on the definition and optimization of product development lifecycle processes with our functional neighbors – i.e. PM, Dev, QA, Marketing, and Social/Community Management.
  • Measure, track and improve the user experience.
  • Discover opportunities to delight customers in ways that are not easily discoverable by market-level research methods.
  • Occasionally uncover strategic jobs that customers need doing, and design opportunities for more sustaining vs. incremental product innovations.
  • Provide the business with both strategic and tactical customer insights and understanding.

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Behaviorally-Anchored User Experience Issue Severity Ratings

by Paul Sherman on May 10, 2010 · 9 comments

in Experience Strategy, Research

This post originated from a response I wrote to a question on the list that dare not utter its name. Someone asked about whether ratings of usability issues should be ranked with an interval or ordinal scale. I thought the question was somewhat specious, because when you’re dealing with behavioral phenomena, claiming your measurement tool is interval vs. ordinal is a distinction without a difference.

What is important, however, is behaviorally anchoring your rating choices. That is, as much as possible you should base your usability severity ratings on observable – or well-defined inferable – criteria. There’s nothing earth-shatteringly new in this post, mind you. I’m just taking the highly non-controversial position that you should define your usability and user experience issue ratings using observable examplars of behavior.

You may notice that I do move off the reservation a bit when you read my rating definitions. I’ve included information about how a user experience issue could affect an organization’s brand equity and revenue as well. I’m not entirely satisfied with how I’ve lumped these (important but somewhat orthogonal) issues together with “straight” usability; I may break them out into separate ratings that accompany each usability issue. So my rating schema would work like this:

  • Usability severity
  • Impact to brand equity
  • Impact to revenue or (other key performance metric)

Anyway….here is my current set of behaviorally-anchored user experience issue ratings; feel free to borrow, modify, criticize, adapt, ignore, etc.

Critical
A critical usability issue will definitely result in a user not being able to complete their intended task. It will also result in an immediate, noticeable and significant impact to the organization’s brand equity, revenue and/or profitability.

High
A high severity usability issue is one that is likely to result in a user not being able to complete their intended task. From the business perspective, the issue is likely to negatively affect the organization’s brand, revenue, or profitability.

Medium
Medium severity usability issues include those that are likely to significantly impede or frustrate a user, but are not likely to prevent users from eventually accomplishing their task. They might also negatively affect the organization’s brand, revenue, or profitability.

Low
Low severity usability issues include those that are likely to present momentary or transient difficulty or confusion to users, but do not prevent users from accomplishing their task. There should be no effect on the organization’s brand or financials.

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Malware Perception Risk Assessment Checklist: Before Its Time

by Paul Sherman on March 25, 2010 · 6 comments

in Experience Strategy, Organizational, Privacy, Research

Back about two years ago I was working on a product line that took a number of potentially objectionable actions with customers’ systems. I pushed back against the product teams, saying that these actions put our products at risk of being perceived as malware.

They in turn pushed back on me, essentially telling me to prove my allegations.

So I went away for a few days, did some research, and returned with my (fanfare) Malware Perception Risk Assessment Tool. Ta-da!

Uh, sorry, I meant “thud”. It went over like a lead ballon. No takers. So I wrote it up in an article at UXmatters, hoping it’d become adopted. More deafening silence. Dejection.

But here’s the thing: systems are becoming more and more interconnected, and more than ever, applications are utilizing aspects of your personal, semi-public, and public data to derive value (presumably for you as well as themselves). Thus the risk of an application being perceived as malware has only increased.

I strongly believe that our field needs to provide the wider world with a tool that can help assess the risk that a particular product or service might be tagged as malware in the minds of users or the market at large.

So I again submit to the UX, dev, and product management communities the Malware Risk Assessment Checklist.

To measure the probability of people perceiving a product as malware, I created a checklist representing a set of attributes that typically characterize malware. I grouped these attributes into these five categories, each containing two or more representative attributes:

  • personal information gathering and usage
  • modification of data or system configuration
  • stealth and resistance to removal or modification
  • resource utilization
  • transparency and disclosure of third-party relationships

This time, I’m explicitly calling out the fact that the checklist is light on data propagation via social networking applications. And I’m asking for help in rounding out that aspect of the checklist. So help a guy out and suggest some social media items. I am releasing this checklist under a “Creative Commons non-commercial share alike-derivative works permitted” license, so you can remix this, add to it, etc. When I receive some good item suggestions, I’ll re-roll the list and publish again.

Here’s the checklist as it stood in 2008. Peeps, have at it.

Personal Information Gathering and Usage
The product or Web site…
Gathers and transmits users’ personal data or information about users’ behavior to the organization providing the product
____Yes
____No
Gathers and transmits users’ personal data or information about users’ behavior to a third party.
____Yes
____No
Uses personal data and data the product developer obtained from third parties to assemble profiles of users that are more complete and comprehensive than users expect.
____Yes
____No
Exposes more of users’ personal information to their contacts or a community than users expected or wanted.
____Yes
____No
Does any of the above without user notification and consent.
____Yes
____No
Does any of the above and does not allow users to opt out.
____Yes
____No

Modification of Data or System Configuration
The product or Web site…
Overwrites, modifies, or destroys users’ data without their knowledge or consent.
____Yes
____No
Modifies other applications on users’ computers or their operating system settings or computing environment.
____Yes
____No
Fails to restore modifications to other applications, operating system settings, or the computing environment when the user uninstalls the product.
____Yes
____No
Damages or renders inoperative other software or hardware on users’ computing systems.
____Yes
____No

Stealth and Resistance to Removal or Modification
The product or Web site…
Hides or renders its files and resources inaccessible to the user through normal means—that is, using standard file managers and viewers.
____Yes
____No
Resists attempts at removal.
____Yes
____No
Modifies antivirus, antispyware, and other computing hygiene applications or application settings, to make itself appear harmless or less harmful than it actually is.
____Yes
____No

Resource Utilization
The product or Web site…
Overuses computing resources—CPU, GPU, memory, and so on—to a noticeable extent.
____Yes
____No
Utilizes computing resources for purposes not directly related to the tasks users typically perform with the software.
____Yes
____No

Transparency and Disclosure of Third-Party Relationships
The product or Web site…
Installs third-party applications that demonstrate any of the above behaviors.
____Yes
____No
Installs third-party applications without user notification and consent.
____Yes
____No

C’mon people, let’s make this checklist useful, and maybe even a de facto standard.

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UX’ers: Get Over Yourselves

by Paul Sherman on March 22, 2010 · 9 comments

in Development, Experience Strategy, Organizational, Product Management, UX And...

Yeah, I said it. And by it, I mean that we’re too convinced of our moral superiority, and it’s hampering our ability to effect the very changes we want to make in this world. Read on to discover why.

This post covers a conversation that started at Scott Berkun’s site, where he made the point that comparatively few UX’ers seem to be able or willing to step up and work on persuading their organizations to put greater resources into the user experience of their products and services.

In this article Scott said:

When it comes to the world of UX, designers, usability engineers, and the rest, they tend to complain about how little power they have, but spend little time doing skill development in how to gain influence and power.  The average designer or IA would be better served by going to a sales conference and learning sales and pitching skills, than going to yet another design event. They’re already good at design, but they’re probably not very good at pitching design ideas to non-designers.

At the end of the post, he cited some articles from Dan Szuc and I on how to sell UX. Just happy for the props, I commented last week, saying:

Dan Szuc and I have been working this problem for a few years now, and we too hear the same “if only I could get x” refrain. I’ve been both a UX innie and an outtie (sp?), and I have to say that insider UX’ers often put themselves into the “learned helplessness” state almost reflexively. UX’ers can be their own worst enemies when it comes to getting resources to do the job right. And I speak from experience: I’ve been there, done that. Maybe that’s why Dano and I beat this drum so loud; i.e., “Learn from our mistakes! Here’s how!”

I also noted the discussion in my UsabilityBlog post of last week. In another happy surprise for me, Scott dropped by and responded on UsabilityBlog, saying:

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…

I lobbed it back at him when I posted this in response:

Thanks for dropping by and commenting at UsabilityBlog Scott. If I had to venture a guess, I think the reluctance among UX’ers 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 mostly 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?

But there’s the rub. Our moral certitude gets in our way. In other words: UX’ers belief in our own rightness is quasi-religious. Hey, if that’s the case then 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 light the way for the blind, 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. Most times, we don’t -and aren’t even in a position to – see the big picture. And we don’t know what it’s like to be on the hook for the revenue of 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 polished version of this argument: http://bit.ly/a2Xwux Thanks again, Scott. Good discussion you’ve triggered here.

That list bit.ly link? It leads to the UXmatters article where I first started crystallizing these thoughts: “The User Experience Practitioner As Change Agent.” I just reread the article, and I still agree with its main points. Maybe it’s common for other people to agree with their former selves, but I am not one of those people. When I read my past work, I typically either cringe or have to stifle the urge to get in my time machine and slap my former self for saying something so asinine. But this piece? It’s stood the test of time. And it resonates with people.

Now if only I can craft the call to action more effectively. I honestly wouldn’t mind if this area became my “UX brand.” It’d be in keeping with my training as an organizational / human factors psychologist, and honor the systems approach of my dissertation mentor, Bob Helmreich.

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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.)

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Lowering Conversion The Quick And Easy Way

by Paul Sherman on March 17, 2010 · 9 comments

in Experience Strategy, Product Management, UX And..., Web

I’m getting tired of having to bring this up. (See here and here for prior scoldings.)

Software and service providers, listen to me: it’s a bad user experience to prevent the use of “plus” email addressing when capturing visitor emails. But it’s not about us, it’s really about you: preventing plus addressing is almost definitely depressing several of your key performance indicators. Why? Because it lowers conversion, and when conversion falls, your other KPI‘s fall like dominos.

Here’s the latest offender:

Starbucks Email Fail

The web team at Starbucks needs to understand that when they prevent the visitor from using plus addressing, they not only create a negative user experience, they also increase abandonment, a.k.a the anti-conversion. And isn’t conversion the whole point (OK, a major point) of having a web presence?

So I strongly suggest to Starbucks – and any other organization that captures emails – that you consider changing this policy. Plus addressing is perfectly acceptable according to the RFC gods, and it allows some of your (more organized, meticulous, and/or obsessive-compulsive) potential customers to better manage their email flow.

Don’t prevent us from managing the flood of communications in a manner that makes our lives easier. If you make signing up easier, more people will sign up.

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Whimsy in the UI: Some Examples

by Paul Sherman on March 15, 2010 · 20 comments

in Design, Experience Strategy

…and by some, I mean two. Three if you include the Slideshare pic from a few days ago, which I’ll lazily repost below.

First, here’s one from Mr. Tweet:

Mr. Tweet Good Error Message

Cute, funny, capitalizes on a well-known existing meme. It’s not too objectionable, meaning it’s not going to piss anyone off in a major way. Overall, a good user experience in a crappy situation (i.e., you’ve tried to browse somewhere or save something, and it didn’t work.)

Next, here’s an RSVP and profile “completer” from eVite:

Whimsy/Fun In The UI: OK?

The context is different of course; this isn’t an error message. I get the fact that they’re trying to help people learn more about each other. Still, the “If I found 1K” question is whimsical but bothersome.

I don’t know why it sticks in my craw like it does; maybe it’s that there’s a disconnect between their intent (connecting people and helping people know each other better) and the execution. I guess it’s just that knowing the answer to that question is a crappy way to build connections between people.

So here’s my bottom line: Mr. Tweet w00t, eVite fail.

Oh, and here’s the Slideshare error message that I liked:

Good Error Page From SlideShare

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Good Error Page From Slideshare

by Paul Sherman on March 11, 2010 · 9 comments

in Design, Experience Strategy, Web

Here’s a server error page that makes you feel good about the company or service.

It humanizes them. By that, I mean that it makes you feel that they have a sense of humor – and humility – and hopefully gets you to realize that there’s people behind the service; it’s not just a faceless corporation.

That’s a good thing.

This is just one of those little details that distinguishes companies who really keep on top of every aspect of the user experience from those that don’t.

Plus, I really like Slideshare.net. I keep all my best slide content there. So there’s that.

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New Ask UXmatters Article On Building UX Organizations

by Paul Sherman on February 25, 2010 · 1 comment

in Development, Experience Strategy, Product Management, UX And...

Janet Six over at UXmatters posted her latest “Ask UXmatters” article. This time it’s about building UX teams. She featured a bunch of my thinking on how to prepare and change organizational cultures for more effective user experience implementations. Which was gratifying. I’m glad the field finds my content useful. (You can always read that stuff in my UX Kit, which I just happened to revise this week, adding some salary and job title updates).

But I thought the other Ask UXmatters contributors had some fantastic points and I want to call them out here.

Dan Szuc of Apogee lists a number of questions a UX team *should* be asking itself. I think he nailed it when he said this:

What do you see as success for your UX group?

To me Dan defined the essence of the issue: when you’re building a UX group, it’s critical to define what success looks like. It may be metrics-driven; e.g., “we shall be usability testing 80% of our company’s product line by EO 2010″, etc. It could be anything really. But of course it helps if your success definition is tied to and aligned with your larger organization’s goals…

Joel Grossman recommends taking a business-case approach to building a UX organization:

Start by preparing a business case, outlining the expected qualitative and quantitative benefits that will accrue to the organization,” suggests Joel. “Define a series of milestones that take you from the current state of affairs to an end-state that will maximize the benefits you’ve identified in the business case.

Agree and agree. Except: true “business case” documents are quite formal affairs. I certainly agree with Joel about demonstrating the qual and quant benefits. But I recommend against adopting a B-school format for your document. Keep it short and to the point. I’m pretty sure this is what Joel meant as well, but I wanted to clarify my thinking on this a bit.

Steve Baty of Meld warns against taking a centralized approach, which I heartily agree with:

I’d be cautious about moving toward a centralized service model in this case…Think instead about what you’re hoping to achieve through that move (i.e., of going centralized):

  • consistency of approach
  • efficient use of resources
  • shared customer or user insights
  • shared UX principles across interactions and touchpoints

I don’t know if Steve was reacting to my content or not. But I should say that I definitely do NOT advocate for centralizing UX in a big way. My view, which I think Steve shares, is that user experience efforts belong with the product teams they collaborate with. UX resources shouldn’t all be piled atop the organization in a service bureau model. And they certainly shouldn’t let themselves be seen as sitting on some fancy “UX throne” issuing UX directives from on high. And even when some centralized user experience concentration is called for, it should be about providing consistency and efficiency; i.e., some “UX glue” across the organization.

Having been on the wrong end of the barrel during several workforce reductions involving centralized UX functions, I have to say that UX contributors and managers are safer when they’re allied with (and aligned with) the product teams they serve. It’s all too easy to lay off an entire centralized UX group, because they’re not directly tied to any specific profit center. When things get tough, an embedded UX group has a much better chance of survival, albeit with attrition.

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My Usability Marathon 2 Preso Embed

by Paul Sherman on February 21, 2010 · 3 comments

in Development, Experience Strategy, Product Management, UX And...

I thought I did a decent job presenting about strategic user experience at Usability Marathon 2. I just remembered that they posted the webinar slides (and voice as well, if I’m not mistaken).

So here it is. I received good feedback on it. YMMV. But I hope you enjoy it.

Usability…Or Strategic User Experience?

View more presentations from Paul Sherman.

Usability Marathon 2 ::  Paul Sherman

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Ling’s Cars: It Works

by Paul Sherman on February 1, 2010 · 13 comments

in Design, Experience Strategy, Usability, Web

Here’s the thing about LingsCars.com: It works.

Yes, it’s ugly as sin, an affront to the design sensibilities of practically everyone.

And this picture doesn’t do it justice. Go to the site, you need to see the seizure-inducing blinky-blinky.

But it works. It really does.

Let’s unpack that a bit. What do I mean when I say it works?

It’s simple. The site fulfills the goals of the business, which I’m guessing are:

  1. To lease cars to customers.
  2. To create a memorable experience and make Ling’s Cars top-of-mind for UK people who want to lease an auto.

By those simple measures, the site is learnable, memorable, usable, and creates a unique brand experience to boot. (No, that is not a pun on the UK’s use of boot for trunk.)

Go ahead. Check it out for yourself. And give yourself these “typical” usability test goals, just to prove my point about the usability of LingsCars.com:

  1. Go find the link that takes you to Ling’s cheapest leasing deals.
  2. You want to ask Ling’s Cars a question. Can you chat online with someone at Ling’s cars? Find a way to do that.
  3. You want to lease a Volvo automobile, but aren’t sure which one you want. What does Ling offer?
  4. You’d like to see what the lease prices are for every one of Ling’s autos. Find a way to look at all the prices together in one place.

And here’s the kicker: I’ve established that it’s somewhat usable. Now, is it memorable? You bet it is. Admit it – the memory of the first time you saw lingscars.com is burned into your synapses. Psychologists call this “flashbulb memory” – memories that are so strong, you remember where you were, what you were doing, and a host of little details associated with the memory.

Granted, your flashbulb memory of Ling’s Cars is probably of the Kennedy assassination, Challenger explosion, or 9/11 variety. But still, I guarantee that you won’t soon forget about Ling’s Cars.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m actually experiencing prodromal migraine symptoms just having Ling’s site in my peripheral vision. I’m not defending the so-bad-it’s-good design in and of itself. What I’m saying is that even the worst design can serve its organization’s goals. It’s a high-risk strategy, yes. But does it work in Ling’s case? I think it does.

Update: A commenter below points out that the site doesn’t exactly fill you with warm fuzzies about the reputation of Ling’s Cars. That is, it doesn’t score points in the professionalism and trust categories.

I would argue that certain businesses need that more than others. If (like me) you grew up in the 70′s and 80′s in the NYC area, you probably remember those Crazy Eddie’s commercials. “Crazy Eddie’s! Our prices are so low, it’s insane!” And of course the pitchman jumped around like a lunatic. They didn’t come across as a staid and somber corporate entity. But they didn’t need to. They were differentiating on price. For electronics, that’s frequently the deciding factor.

Is it the same with car leasing in the UK? I have no idea. But I suspect that Ling is indeed trying to differentiate on price – notice the frequent references to “low prices” on the site. And do you need to build a staid and somber site to trumpet your price differentiation? Probably not. In fact, one could make the argument that the site actually *supports* the price differentiation claim thusly:

Ling’s Cars…our prices are so low, we don’t even bother spending a lot of money on our site…we just home-build it so we can keep our prices low.

Maybe that’s a stretch. Thoughts?

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My Usability Marathon Preso

by Paul Sherman on October 14, 2009 · 0 comments

in Experience Strategy

I just posted my Usability Marathon presentation to Slideshare. (I love Slideshare btw…no surprise; Rashmi Sinha started out as a UX person.)

I’m getting good feedback and nice retweets on Twitter; which is a good sign.

Normally, I’d pull some choice quotes to whet your appetite. But I’ve got a pile of storyboarding and wireframing to do this week, so it’s back to the UX grind (but what a satisfying fun grind!).

Enjoy.

Usability…Or Strategic User Experience? ::? Usability Marathon 2

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New UXMatters Article: 8 Things You Should Be Doing In Your UX Practice, But Probably Aren’t

by Paul Sherman on July 20, 2009 · 1 comment

in Experience Strategy

So I’m seeing a nice little Twitter spike about my latest UXmatters article “8 Things You Should Be Doing In Your UX Practice, But Probably Aren’t.”

It was a column borne of equal parts desperation and writers’ block. Then I remembered how much mileage Cracked.com gets out of the “X Things” format, and decided to try a UX-specific version. You take your inspiration where you can get it, right? Honest truth, I had low expectations for myself.

The funny thing was when I finished it, I realized that the article didn’t actively suck. In fact it was kinda decent. Of course, it helped that I had some good advice and suggestions from Susan Hura, John Rhodes, and Dan Szuc. But no one said I couldn’t turn to friends/colleagues/wife for a little inspiration.

So here’s a little taste of the article; for more go to the site and check it out yourself. Quoting me:

…here are 8 things you should be doing to improve and grow in your professional practice, but that you’re probably not doing—or not doing enough:

  • Communicate simply
  • Read, read, read
  • Pick a new UX tool and experiment with it
  • Hold a UX stand-down and operational review
  • Stretch yourself outside of user experience
  • Think about your UX career path
  • Repurpose your UX assets
  • Depart from script on user research visits

I hope you enjoy the article, and feel free to comment either here or at UXmatters if you have more things to suggest.

8 Things You Should Be Doing In Your Personal UX Practice… :: ? Paul Sherman

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My UPA09 “UX Kit” Presentation & Bonus Audience Comments

by Paul Sherman on June 15, 2009 · 9 comments

in Design, Experience Strategy

Today I’m posting the presentation and source document from my UPA2009 presentation “A Kit For Building User Experience Teams in R&D Organizations.” The talk went very well; nearly everyone in the (somewhat small but whatever) audience spoke up and contributed.

Happily, when I posted links to this content on Twitter I got about a half-dozen retweets, which for a second-stringer like me is not too shabby. So I think you’ll like this preso and the kit doc, which I’ve released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. BTW you can learn more about this license and what it means at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/. Basically, it means you are welcome to make use of the content as long as you attribute it to me and you share any derivative works under the same license. Which I think is more than fair, and leads to boatloads of good UX karma besides.

And here’s a little bonus: I asked my friend and session chair Lyle Kantrovich (@lkantrov for the Twitterati in the crowd) to take notes on the audience comments and contributions; which he peevishly (kidding! I meant happily) did. I’ve posted his notes below.

Before I link you out to the content you might be interested in the “story behind the story” of this presentation. About 7 or 8 months ago I decided to submit to UPA2009, and scoured my hard drive for something appropriate. I realized that I had created a comprehensive resource while at Sage that detailed how to staff, budget and run a user experience team at a medium-to-large software organization. I figured that this was as good a submission as any. Plus, it really fit my whole “get the organizational structure and processes right” theme. If you’ve been reading me for any length of time you know I have a passion for this area of our field, having trained in social/organizational psychology and built several teams over the past 12 years.

So I submitted a proposal, which went something like this:

This submission provides an overview of a “User Experience Kit” that one user-centered design team developed as an implementation guide for other product teams within their global organization. This kit was first released in mid-2007 within the organization, and has been used in the organization to guide the creation of four additional teams since then. The primary audience for this presentation is people who are able to drive change in their organizations and have the authority to support those changes with allocation of resources.

And it got accepted. Yay.

Of course I put off writing the presentation for months, but not for the usual reason (i.e., pure procrastination). As the day of the talk drew nearer, it became clear to me that the kit itself was a really boring story. And I don’t do boring. I HATE boring. I have high standards for presenting, I do it well, and I was stressing out about how boring this talk was shaping up to be.

That is, until I realized that the more interesting story was *why* I had to create a UX implementation guide/kit, what it said about my then-organization (and other organizations), and what we as a field should be doing about it.

And then everything was alright, I wrote some entertaining slides (keep on the lookout for “Captain Obvious”) and I gave a kick-@ss talk.

So, without further ado, here’s what I covered in my talk:

  • The sad truth about the need for a “UX kit”
  • A bit about the kit itself
  • An extended discussion about launching UX teams and spreading UX in medium to large orgs

As I mentioned above, Lyle was kind enough to capture discussion notes, which I’m including immediately below. However, I recommend looking at the preso first (either in .pdf format or on SlideShare) and getting the kit source doc before reading the discussion notes.

Thanks again Lyle for capturing the audience comments. Here they are:

  • Come back with data to show the value of what happened during UX processes.
  • Be more of a teacher – share UX? techniques (aka “UX freeze-tag”).
  • Be flexible.
  • Triage projects early on – to discuss how UX can help.
  • Focus on convincing people who can be convinced.
  • Have an open-door policy on usability lab.
  • Create an internal blog with test highlight clips.
  • Conduct a quarterly UI workshop.
  • Stay relevant – you know if you’re relevant by # of people coming to you.
  • Focus on money/budget & key influencers in the organization.
  • UX has to manage a lot of different things at the same time.
  • “Customer Experience Bar Raiser Review Board”? – executives that help set UX direction.
  • Selfishly share the glory – co-present success stories with clients/partners.
  • Find a mentor/peer outside your organization to learn from, commiserate with and share with.
  • Find an aspirational (design/product) example – something that reflects what you’d like the UX to look like.

A Kit For Building UX Teams [preso pdf]? [kit doc]? ::? Paul Sherman

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My “Usability Or User Experience” Presentation From Big (D)esign 09

by Paul Sherman on June 14, 2009 · 1 comment

in Experience Strategy

I had a really good time presenting and watching others present at Big (D)esign 09 in Dallas two weeks ago. One highlight was getting to hear Norm Cox‘s keynote. My presentation was well-received from what I can tell. But I got so busy prepping for UPA2009 that I completely forgot to post my Big (D) presentation.

So, my presentation from Big (D)esign “Usability Or User Experience?” is now available here at my business site (ShermanUX, which I clearly don’t plug enough…). My co-presenter Kaaren Hanson is still working on getting her slides in shape for general consumption.

Tomorrow I’ll follow up with a post linking to my UPA 2009 presentation.

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Usability Testing Does Not Equal A Good User Experience

by Paul Sherman on April 22, 2009 · 4 comments

in Experience Strategy

Here’s a pointer to a very short article I wrote for my UX friends in Hong Kong at Apogee.

Usability Testing Does Not Equal A Good User Experience ::? Paul Sherman via Apogee

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