I actually work as a Product Developer in my company and have a good deal of experience in this area. I've been the one pushing for UX education throughout my product peers and our engineers. You may want to take an education approach as well, as my colleagues are very eager to legitimately learn how to better the UX.
We often hit the territorial walls of "that's design!" and you have no ideas the number of rewrites we've had to do to remove any and all design implications or allusions from our requirements and specs. It's a learning process, but both sides are playing nicely and realize the end goal. A big help was Jesse James Garrett's "Elements of User Experience" since we could point out the different planes and say "Product, you're responsible for strategy and scope. UI, you've got skeleton and surface. Work together as a team to tackle the Structure." This is an over-simplification and we work closely throughout the process, but you see my point. Most often I've found ignorance is the source when something appears as lip service. Try to reach out and at a basic level provide education (or at least a point in the right direction), and then take the strengths of each department to build a truly solid experience and product. It's not always easy and it can be frustrating as all get out, but slowly it is starting to come together. Good luck! Thanks, Erin On Feb 10, 2008, at 10:14 AM, karen wrote: I was responding to the Cooper thread but thought this might be a different topic. I agree that spending time on the IxD of a product before requirements are written in theory should result in a stronger, more innovative product. The problem I've run into in my last two positions (ecommerce and now, media) is that the product analysts/managers view any pre-requirements work as their role. They want to do the research, then they write requirements which state how the product should be designed and they are the decision makers during design. Ultimately, they drive the design. And not one of the product folks I've worked with come from the IxD, IA or usability arenas. This is a conflict for me as the product analysts/managers are ultimately concerned with driving revenue not UE. Explaining that a higher quality UE will increase revenue gets lip service but hasn't changed anything. Have any of you had similar experiences? How do you handle it? Thanks for any suggestions, Karen ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ 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 ________________________________________________________________ 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
