[IxDA Discuss] golden opportunity, a case and a very unusual proposal

[Katie Albers]

Well, first of all, Jack is right. For a variety of reasons, that is 
a very bad idea. It not only leaves you without a job (because even 
if they don't find someone better, it will lead to their thinking 
badly about you), and it leaves them with a bitter taste in their 
mouths about IxD...no one will win. I suggest a multi-pronged 
approach:

1) There are many job descriptions for IxD practitioners out there. 
look through those (you can find them on job boards as well as in 
professional sources) and cull out some (4 or 5, say) that are for 
companies in business similar to your company's and that conform to 
the way you see IxD.

Include a description of your job as you understand it. Those other 
listings will help you word things and put them in a coherent form.

2) You say you wrote them an email that got them to create a whole 
new job in a whole new practice, just for you! Excellent! Now go 
through that email and examine it with an eye to how to translate it 
into practice. Come up with actual deliverables and processes that 
will allow you to make the contribution they are expecting to see 
from you. Describe what you need from the existing company structure 
in order to be able to deliver. Describe what you will give them in 
exchange and how they will benefit.

Use your original email as an outline for this, like so:
-[Benefit quoted from original email]
--Your contribution
--Your deliverable
--Conditions on their part that will make contribution possible
--Why they care

Yes that's likely to wind up being somewhat repetitive. Just try to 
use new words to say the same thing.

3) Find some resources -- preferably articles or blog entries -- from 
people like Cooper (always good because engineers frequently cite 
VisualBasic as some perfect tool for building usable 
software...except Alan Cooper, father of Visual Basic, who considers 
it pretty much unforgivable from a UCD standpoint), Don Norman, Jakob 
Nielsen, et al. Try to choose authors who are either acknowledged 
gurus in the IxD world and if possible, in the field of the company. 
Do a little research and find out what the benefits have been of the 
IxD work of these people. Type that up -- just put it in outline 
form, don't spend hours trying to compose elegant prose.

5) Ask your manager for a meeting in which to discuss how you can 
best integrate into the team. When he accepts, send him an agenda 
that includes pointers to the files you've created.

6) Print all that stuff out (yes, print. On paper.) Put the whole 
package together with a top level request for a chance to demonstrate 
the value of this practice on a particular project. Do 1 short 
paragraph summarizing each of the document groups I've outlined 
above...not each document, each document *group*. Each paragraph 
should be a couple sentences -- bullet points are better.

7) Put the packet you created in Step 6 on your manager's desk as 
soon as he accepts the meeting.

8) Take a second copy for him with you to the meeting, along with a 
copy for yourself.

Don't get drawn into arguing points. Just keep reiterating that you 
want the chance to demonstrate your value on this team and that this 
is what it will take to do it. Don't get hot and bothered. Don't get 
upset. If your manager disagrees with something and he's got a point, 
briefly negotiate a change. If your manager disagrees with something 
and he doesn't have a point, simply say "I'm trying to demonstrate my 
value to this company, and while I realize that it may seem 
[awkward/difficult/unusual], in order for me to do so, I need to be 
able to do this. Is there any way you can see that I can do this 
without [thing you need]?

The point is that you don't ask your boss to do anything that he has 
to remember, or react to over time. You do the research and you show 
it to him. It's pretty clear that they want to include IxD, just tell 
them how to go about it. My guess is that they'll be very agreeable 
as soon as they have something clear-cut to work with. Your job (and 
you're very lucky to have this opportunity) is to tell them what they 
want. And then deliver it.

Good luck.

Katie