Greetings all, been buzzing around but finally decided to join this wonderful list today.
There are so many posts in this thread that is hard to determine what has already been said but here's my 2 cents: The most important thing needed to answer this question is to move out of a discussion about design and into one about strategy. You have to change your terminology. Using the terms: "crappy", "slick", "sexy", etc, are using adjectives that are abstract at best, and all of them are relative to your personal experience with interfaces in the past. The better terms to use are: "effective" "ineffective" You are now saying something absolute when using these terms. The discussion switches to being about whether or not the interface effectively allows the user to complete the task they have set out to complete. You can also attempt to measure that effectiveness, whether that be in time saved, steps removed, or any other advantageous effect a new interface may bring to the table. Once we are at that point, we can now have real discussions with decision makers in a language they understand, because now user experience is being treated like a feature or requirement like any other they have on the list. It is always difficult to justify design for design's sake, but in this context it is a lot easier to explain why experience design is valuable. There are many companies that obviously do not compete on experience. This can be for many reasons: 1/ They have a differentiator that is far more important than the effectiveness of their interface. This could be the fact that they are competing on price. When you compete on price you make sacrifices in many places and that is often found on the experience side. 2/ They have no competition. This one has also been brought up. No need to get really far ahead of no one. 3/ If you are dealing with companies that have internal product teams, often their can be lack of experience in implementing "effective" interfaces. If that team has to implement an interface designed outside of their team, they can often resist it because of their own feeling of inadequacy in implementing it. They can often play this out to higher ups as: "It isn't worth it" I have found that it is probably a better idea for experience designers to walk away from projects where the client does not see user experience as something important. In these scenarios, you will often end up being an order taker and the job will end up being nothing but a nightmare: 1/ price squabling 2/ changes in mid-project 3/ getting sign off and many other things. It is always best to work with clients that see you as strategic and see you as an expert. I know that seems like a utopia type scenario, but it is something to strive for. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24918 ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
