Hi:
Recently there have been a number of threads about how to present the
argument for UX design to a company. In response I have put together the
following outline for a presentation. What improvements can you add?
----------------------------------------------------------------
>>Value Proposition
User Experience Design is an enormous opportunity for our company. It will
allow us to be more competitive and more profitable. With the right strategy
it's straightforward to implement, inexpensive and risk-free. It will make
our customers happy, improve employee morale and boost our ability to work
with partners. In short, there is a large upside and no downside.
>>What is UX design, exactly?
UX design is a way of approaching the development of interactive products
(such as software, web sites, web applications and interactive devices) that
focuses on the quality of the user's experience. It ensures that the
interactive products we produce are useful, usable and desirable. As a
result, they fit the needs of the customers, produce results with minimal
effort and are a pleasure to use.
UX design is achieved by the collaboration of the business (especially
product management and marketing) with engineering and with design
specialists.
>>How will UX design make us more profitable?
UX design will increase profits by:
o Reducing product development cost
o Reducing support costs
o Reduce training costs
o Making our customers happier and increasing market share
>>How will UX design make us more competitive?
UX design will make us more competitive because the interactive products,
software and websites we produce will be easier to use, more effective and
more desirable to our audience.
It will also reduce support costs.
Because our products work better and are better received, we will have a
competitive edge.
>>How can doing extra work reduce costs?
UX design is not extra work. The design of all the user interactions with
the product (and its environment) has to be done anyway. The problem is that
we traditionally do it in an ad hoc way. UX design processes don't add a lot
of new tasks.
Of course some new tasks are added but these are offset by increased
development efficiency. UX design processes improve the communications and
alignment between the development engineers and the business side. Research
shows that the increased clarity and consensus among the project's
stakeholders translates into a more efficient project and reduced rework.
It would be premature to suggest what our savings would be but a
conservative estimate would be 10-15% less rework as well as a shortened
time to market.
>>If UX design is so great, why isn't everyone doing it?
Many leading companies are doing it. We all know how Apple's focus on user
experience design has translated into a huge win for the iPhone. Now many
companies are focusing on making user experience design a core competence.
>>What do we need to do to implement UX design here?
User experience is not something you can "buy" and plug in. It requires that
we work in a different way:
o It's a way of approaching problems and working together
o It requires the whole-hearted cooperation of the business and IT
sides
UX design starts at the top:
o Because it cuts across departmental lines, it is only successful when
senior management determines that it must become a strategic core
organizational competence.
O We need you and other senior management to communicate the importance
of UX design throughout the company.
UX design must be positioned as a management objective for both the business
and technical side. Otherwise it will not be seen as a requirement and won't
be taken seriously.
UX design needs to be integrated into projects at the earliest possible
stages. Generally this means starting when the business case is being
constructed.
We will want a framework for UX design that integrates into our existing
frameworks.
We will need some UX design talent which we can either hire or purchase.
Over time, we want to build this talent in house.
It would be useful to make certain that we start capturing metrics from the
beginning so we can asses success and refine our processes as we learn from
our experience.
============================
Charles B. Kreitzberg, Ph.D.
CEO, Cognetics Corporation
============================
________________________________________________________________
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
