Jared said: Ali, if you do what Patrick suggests, you'll not only fail, but you'll have a miserable time doing so.
Your job isn't to *sell* your teammates on anything. It's about teamwork. Find out what the objectives and long-term vision of the team is. Work from there. I've got to agree with Jared here. I've made myself blue in the face trying to convince both clients and coworkers (simultaneously, mind you) of the value of IxD-related activities "in general." It nearly always fails until I am able to understand my clients' needs and then tailor my design approach directly to them. For example, I ranted and raved for a while that we needed to bootstrap all of our project efforts with a Contextual Inquiry approach so that we could get a glimpse of user needs as they exist "on the factory floor" rather than coming up with perceived problems out of thin air. At my organization, where user research is not the norm, this approach was met with deaf ears. It was not until I spoke with a client that already had many of their technical needs met, but acknowledged that they still weren't solving their customers' problems after many product releases that I realized that *this* was a great candidate for my preferred CI approach. It didn't take much convincing that this approach would work, and when it succeeded, it bought me at least a little leverage within my organization to try other approaches with other clients. So Ali, if I were to give any advice it would be this: instead of thinking about how you would change the whole process (or the engineers' mindsets) in your organization, pick a few smaller issues that you see, and then make it your goal to solve them in a way that works within the organization's context. But remember: you should provide value to your organization every step of the way. Ask for feedback regularly, especially from the engineers you work with. Be just as user centered in your approach to organizational change as you would be to your product's design. Celebrate your small wins, don't sweat the losses (but make it a point to learn from them), and keep a keen eye out for opportunities where your skills will be helpful and valued. Most of all, relax, and try to have fun. Merely being calm in the situation you are currently in will win you some credibility, and the value you provide will buy you a ton more. Josh On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 5:16 PM, Jared Spool <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Jan 26, 2009, at 12:02 AM, Patrick wrote: > > Get used to it. ;) >> >> It's the real world. Your job is to sell them on it. Sounds tough, but >> it's true. >> >> On Jan 25, 2009, at 2:12 PM, Ali Amrohvi wrote: >> >> As a User Centered Design graduate I find it quite irritating to be >>> working in an environment where engineers run everything >>> ... >>> Few of them have taken some HCI courses and THATS IT! >>> There is NO qualitative research and both hardware-/software engineers >>> think that their own opinion about the products matter. >>> >> > Patrick, I respectfully disagree. > > Ali, if you do what Patrick suggests, you'll not only fail, but you'll have > a miserable time doing so. > > Your job isn't to *sell* your teammates on anything. It's about teamwork. > Find out what the objectives and long-term vision of the team is. Work from > there. > > Jared > > Jared M. Spool > User Interface Engineering > 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 > e: [email protected] p: +1 978 327 5561 > http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks Twitter: jmspool > UIE Web App Summit, 4/19-4/22: http://webappsummit.com > ________________________________________________________________ > 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 > -- http://josh.ev9.org/weblog ________________________________________________________________ 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
