Time to work on your persuasion skills, patience, and what Peter Merholtz refers to IA (in this case, IxD) Judo. And, use Stephen Anderson's "Eye-Candy is a Critical Business Requirement" to build your case, http://www.slideshare.net/stephenpa/eye-candy-is-a-critical-business-requirement.<http://www.slideshare.net/stephenpa/eye-candy-is-a-critical-business-requirement> It's not they're engineers that makes them this way - feeling unswayed by arguments beyond their own opinion. This tends to be the case when one group dominates. They're not accustomed to being challenged or questioned, and they probably don't realize that you're trying to make an impact. In the early days, you're likely more a pest to them than one who is bringing valid arguments for product improvement.
I've had similar experience is creative-dominated organizations and merchant-dominated organizations. Those groups matured long before the front-end was a substantial part of the work, so they were settled and stubborn. To me, it seemed like they didn't care at all. In fact, they just cared about things that were at first not visible to me. In order to become part of the team, I had to first get a glimpse of what was important to them. In some ways it's like going to a new high school and having to infiltrate a new clique. I've just joined a new, creative-dominated group and am experiencing the same challenge all over again. First, show them that you can work with them, on their terms. Your goals would be keeping up and still adding value while swallowing your pride. You've learned a lot in school, so you feel like you know how to fix their problems. But, they've been doing their stuff for a while too, and no one likes to have a newcomer who thinks they have all the answers. You have to pay your dues, earn your chops. Next, find partners, whether they're inside or outside the engineering group. Make a connection with those people, learn from their mistakes and successes so you can move faster and smarter. Sometimes friends can vouch for you when you're not there, but would want someone to support you. For instance, when project teams are being formed, or when there's a new problem to be solved. Then, work on something of your own that is a strong statement of your UX/IxD skills and is *not* a challenge to their way of doing things. For instance, maybe a ux-oriented process improvement for a problem that's been bothering the engineering team. In the merchant-oriented business, going from static wireframes to interactive prototypes showed them results faster so they could make decisions faster and with less ambiguity. That made me look valuable in a way that helped them. I hope this helps. The culture is significant determinant of the quality of the product. I consider it a major component of my job to to improve the culture I work in, just as much as I improve the quality of the products. Roughly quoting Hackos and Redish, "usability is about improving the quality of the product...and improving the quality of the process by which products are made." -Jay On Sun, Jan 25, 2009 at 4:12 PM, Ali Amrohvi <a...@amroha.dk> wrote: > As a User Centered Design graduate I find it quite irritating to be > working in an environment where engineers run everything. My position does > not allow me to say much yet as a Tech Writer/Project Manager assisting > the engineers on usability issues I have had it! > They all believe that designing for the end users only involve usability > issues... Should I send them a copy of Allan Cooper's "The Inmates are > running the asylum"? :) > Few of them have taken some HCI courses and THATS IT! > There is NO qualitative research and both hardware-/software engineers > think that their own opinion about the products matter. > > > > > > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > -- ------------------------------------------------------------ Jay A. Morgan Director, UX at Gage in Minneapolis twitter.com/jayamorgan google talk: jayamorgan skype: jaytheia ------------------------------------------------------------ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
