On Jan 26, 2009, at 3:44 PM, Patrick wrote:
There are many, many environments where UX isn't the focus, and even if they have hired someone in that field, they don't know what to do with that person, or the developers aren't interested in UX because it gets in the way of them not being on board. I agree here it needs a team, but again, it's all dependent on the politics of the situation. Most of us haven't written books or blogs, so we don't have that part sold already. I would guess most of us have worked in situations like this, and as one UX friend of mine said, "You know, sometimes you just document it, and hope someone pays attention."
I work with organizations in these situations all the time. In my experience, "selling" doesn't help them move the argument forward, because with every forward push there's an equal and justified push- back. It just results in conflict and frustration for all around.
I have yet to meet anyone on the development or engineering side of the operation who doesn't understand that a usable design is better. However, not all designs need to be usable to be successful, and since making something usable is often an added expense, it's hard to justify.
Even when it's clear that a more usable design will win in the marketplace (or whatever the organizational goals are), as Chauncey rightly pointed out, if the reward structure for the developers doesn't take that into account, no amount of "selling" will move in that direction.
In my experience, unusable designs rarely exist due to team ignorance of the value of a great experience. There are often many other factors that the team is battling and making something more usable is a place where the battle is lost. Standing on a soapbox yelling to the gods that this is a crime against humanity rarely does anything other than cause one to lose their voice.
Don't judge an engineer until you've walked a mile in their shoes. (Because then you'll be a mile away and you'll have their shoes.)
Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: jsp...@uie.com p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks Twitter: jmspool UIE Web App Summit, 4/19-4/22: http://webappsummit.com ________________________________________________________________ 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
