[IxDA Discuss] Selling the Value of UX to Mgmt

[Katie Albers]

On the one hand I agree that one wants to avoid all
the bad side effects Lisa enumerates. On the other
hand, I have found that If you give management the
"good news," about their current products they stop
listening. A "see, we knew it was all okay! It's the
users' problem/UX staff making stuff up!" or similar,
takes over and you lose what could have been a
"teachable moment."  

In my experience, the approach that works best is to
say "Let's start with the problems and my
recommendations on how to improve the interaction." I
go through the problems I've found [prioritized in
case I lose them at some point] and my suggestions for
improvement and I get buy off on every item on it
before I give them their ice cream for being good
children...I tell them what's working and why and what
it indicates that it's working (that way, if nothing
else happens, at least they have some skeletal
understanding of what to look for).

Katie
=================
Katie Albers
User Experience Consultant
katie at firstthought.com

--- Michael Tuminello <mt at motiontek.com> wrote:

> I would say Lisa's point is important and often
> overlooked, or at  
> least given short shrift in these discussions.  Talk
> about how to  
> make things better as opposed how bad they currently
> are.  Oftentimes  
> engineering can be an important ally in these
> discussions with  
> management, and you may unwittingly alienate them by
> taking the easy  
> road and bashing the existing design shortcomings of
> their "baby".   
> As a usability/design person you can critique
> yourself into a corner  
> using the all-too-common "isn't this stupid"
> approach.  Some of the  
> classic books in our field (design of everyday
> things comes to mind)  
> have taken this approach, which has IMO led to its
> being very common  
> in usability discussions and articles.
> 
> Michael
> 
> PS:  I still think design of everyday things is a
> great book - no  
> slam intended.
> 
> >  You definitely want to
> > collect the good too so that 1. you can preserve
> those features and  
> > 2. show
> > that you're not arrogant and 3. not make mgmt feel
> like the product  
> > they've
> > based part of their company on is all bad.
> 
>
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