On Aug 13, 2009, at 2:45 PM, jennifer wolfgang wrote:
Rather, I'm in a situation where I am the sole internal UX person at
a company that though it's been in business for over 20 years, has
internal processes that don't yet gel with what we UX practitioners
understand to be the most useful in designing an easy-to-use website.
Jennifer,
This is the First Law of Consulting (true whether internal or external):
You can't stop people from sticking beans up their nose.
If someone is intent in sticking a bean up their nose, no amount of
discussion or argument will convince them to do otherwise. The bean
will go up the nose and the best you can do, as a consultant, is wait
until its over and ask, "So, how is that working for you?"
This is all about perspective. Picking one's battles. Some battles
just aren't worth the fight.
This sounds like a real beans-and-noses scenario. You can try to talk
them out of it, but my guess is it'll be a futile effort. The best you
can do is wait until it's over and ask if it's working for them.
Given that, if I were working on this effort, I might start a
discussion around "How will we know if it's working?"
There's a sales technique known as an assumptive question -- a
question that assumes the customer is thinking aggressively about
their problem. It serves the dual purpose of showing respect while
pointing out a potential issue. I might use an assumptive questions
here like, "You've probably seen the research in MarketingSherpa and
other places that say that many of these types of form intercepts can
cause significant drop-offs in signups. What percentage of dropoffs
will we consider to be acceptable?" and "The research on these types
of forms show that many of the leads that come in are falsified (just
to get the PDF) or unqualified. What percentage of these types of
leads will we consider acceptable?"
They probably haven't got an answer, but just by asking it, you've
started a conversation about the consequences of the decision.
Inotherwords, "What will sticking the bean up your nose feel like?"
and "How much pain are you willing to tolerate?" It gives you a chance
to talk about measurement techniques and possible preventative options
(such as testing up front).
They still may go ahead and do it, but now you have a context to
discuss how, as a team, y'all will measure the success of the effort.
No matter what happens, I'm betting that the sun will continue to rise
each morning on its designated schedule. So, I wouldn't lose any sleep
on it.
Hope this helps,
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
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