Hey IxDA'ers, This quote was influential and inspiring when I first encountered HCI in school:
"Usability is not only about improving the quality of the products, but also improving the quality of the process by which products are made." - Rough quote from _A Practical Guide to Usability Testing_ by Ginny Redish & Joseph Dumas, 1999 What have you all done to improve the quality of the process? Were you successful? How do you gauge that success? How did you get into making that improvement? With whom did you partner? Personally, I've taken on a few demons of corporate culture to make such improvements. They were at times torturous, at times primally exhilarating. I've done enterprise personas, built a digital (Morae-based) usability lab in corporate HQ, launched a design pattern library for an enterprise and their external agency partners. Not chest-pounding, but sharing my experience because I know - and still am haunted by? - the mistakes, mis-steps, and compromises made along the way. Success? ... I know most of those tools and others I've done far undershoot my expectations for success. Some of this because no one took them on as life-long causes (myself included), and because in many ways the host wasn't ready for the transplant, so to speak. How? What partners? ... In almost all cases, I picked up the ball and started running with it to start the game. In each case, I had to abide by, bend, break, or disregard rules, norms, limits, constraints and other bureaucratic barriers. In each case, I had to partner with or work with many other players and win the favor of an executive. I think I'll always pursue big projects like this - whether for my employer or our clients - and I'm looking for other stories. Many thanks, Jay -- ------------------------------------------------------------ Jay A. Morgan Director, UX at Gage twitter.com/jayamorgan linkedin.com/in/jayamorgan ------------------------------------------------------------ ________________________________________________________________ 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
