[Jared wrote: 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.]
I'd like to introduce to you a few people from our organization that think usability is unnecessary. The flipside is that there are many that are "coming around" just because of exposure. [Jared wrote: 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.] The other way of UX exposure is to create a UX Group. We created a UX Group in our organization because we felt it was important to expose usability and design principles to everyone, not just the developers. They get involved in projects that will affect the organization, not just us. And some of the managers make it known to their developers that if they haven't gone to our group or core team for any feedback, then they're missing out on a big opportunity. The key thing here is that this wouldn't be possible at all without an Executive Champion. [Jared wrote: 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. ] Before me and some of my predecessors, there was no usability. And the organization's designs were horrid - or so I was told and IMO. I was surprised that anyone could use them at all. Soapboxes are of little use if you don't have people listening. Get people engaged in useful projects that anyone can contribute. I think that's the key for anyone to understand what UX/IxD etc. is all about. Hope this helps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=37605 ________________________________________________________________ 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
