Hi Jared: < Instead of worrying whether we're saying things that will be misunderstood, let's focus on creating tools and techniques for those folks who have already bought the Kool-Aid.>
I hear what you are saying and I think its fine as far as you are taking it. By all means let's build tools and techniques for these folks. But I want to go farther and the reason is *influence*. Right now, there are shifts going on in business as organizations rethink their relationship with technology. User experience design is key to creating products, websites, customer forums, marketing, partnerships and such. Why not make it easy for companies to embrace design at a strategic level? We know that the right design approach makes good business sense in that it will save money both in development and will yield a product that resonates with customers and will therefore be effective in the marketplace. There has been a lot of interesting discussion on this list about how to talk with the recalcitrant manager and the CEO. These are the right questions to ask. For a company to truly embrace design, it has to become a core value so that everyone involved with the project has some shared vision and values. We must make the business case for design to senior management and we must help organizations change so that they can become more design-centric. The first step in doing that is to stop the useless yammering about UCD and "users" and get our story straight. We need the elevator speech. Then we need to back it up with some ROI. If we do this, we will increase our influence and help spread the values we espouse. If only we could agree on them. :-) Best, Charlie ============================ Charles B. Kreitzberg, Ph.D. CEO, Cognetics Corporation ============================ -----Original Message----- From: Jared Spool [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Sunday, August 30, 2009 12:32 AM To: [email protected] Cc: 'Andrei Herasimchuk'; 'IXDA list' Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] We don\'t make consumer products, hence no need for a User Centered Design development process. On Aug 29, 2009, at 11:07 PM, Charles B. Kreitzberg wrote: > So here is my bottom line recommendation: > > For those of you who feel UCD as a methodology should give way to more > modern approaches, great. Just stop bashing UCD because others, less > sophisticated than you, will misunderstand and come to the > conclusion that > they don't need any design at all. > > Is this really so hard to understand? I don't think this is really as much of a problem as you make it out to be. A manager, coming to the philosophy of creating designs that delight users is good for business, will embrace it no matter what. Managers who shy away from that philosophy will do so no matter what. If they turn to any "sage writing" that argues either way, it's to support a decision they've already come to. Instead of worrying whether we're saying things that will be misunderstood, let's focus on creating tools and techniques for those folks who have already bought the koolaid. Good design is hard enough to do when everyone is on the same page. Let's focus our efforts on making that easier. Once we achieve that, then we can worry about dealing with the misguided folks, assuming they are still around. Jared ________________________________________________________________ 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
