Ali, It sounds to me like you want to build a collaborative environment where you have opinion is respected. So share your toys and invite them to play with you.
If you want qualitative research make it happen somehow. If you don't have a budget, arrange for people as close to your target user as possible to run through some tasks with the product. Do this by using other people in the company or friends and family if you can -- and compensate them by buying them lunch. Invite people to observe the testing, and record the sessions for others to watch. (Kill 2 birds with one stone by asking the engineers to be the videographer to get them into the room with you). Nothing makes people believe in qualitative research like seeing someone work with their product and react to it. Something else that has worked well for me in the past when I needed to build respect and build a collaborative environment is to set up a cross-functional design/brainstorming meeting. Invite a cross functional set of people to attend a meeting where the objective is to come up with 3 different solutions. Make it a structured (but fun and creative ) meeting where everyone has an opportunity to contribute what they know at all stages. Organize the meeting around a series of topcis like: What do we know about the problem? What do we know about the users? How can we solve the solution? Aim for at least 3. What would each potential solution look like? (high level design ideas) What are the strengths and weaknesses for each propose solution? What could be done to fix the weaknesses in each proposal? At the end of the meeting offer to take the couple strongest ideas away and develop them further and then bring them back to the team to review. In doing something like that, you have the opportunity to participate and show that you have valuable contributions, but everyone else also gets a chance to be heard. I always find I come out of these meetings with great new ideas, and a few people in the organization more willing to include me and my thoughts in the future. A bonus to the cross-functional meeting -- I very seldom have to ever argue against an idea %u2013 someone else in the meeting does it for me. I can just support the best ideas on the table. %uF04A Heather Searl User Experience Consultant www.heathersearl.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=37605 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
