On Mar 12, 2009, at 7:31 PM, Scott Berkun wrote:
I think I framed this question the wrong way. What I want is this:
If you knew a VP of Marketing at WidgetCo who suddenly decided his
widgets
needed to be easy to use, what should he do? Since he knows
*nothing* about
IXda, or usability, or any of it, where does he start? How can he
find a
good design firm to hire? Or get guidance on hiring his first full
time
Design person?
What I'm mystified by is the lack of any website or FAQ sheet to
give to a
VP like this to answer their basic questions. I've looked and I've
found
nothing. It seems a basic piece of evangalism for what this list
is about.
Know of anything?
I've actually been thinking about writing an article about this
lately, because it's something we've been called on to help with a lot.
For hiring in general, I'm a huge fan of Lou Adler's Hire With Your
Head philosophy (http://tinyurl.com/LouAdler). I believe you can hire
anyone well, by using his technique, even if you're not sure what that
person does or how they do it.
The basic gist is this: You hire, not on expertise, but by
demonstrating that they have the ability to do what you need done.
You start by listing performance objectives -- in one year, what would
you have expected the new hire to have accomplished. This gets you a
clear understanding of what you need accomplished.
Then everything you do to hire (whether a full time, contractor, or
consulting firm) is based on those objectives. You recruit the
candidates using the objectives. You screen them comparing their
resumes to the objectives. You conduct phone interviews, having them
tell you about the accomplishments they are most proud of, comparing
those accomplishments to the objectives. The interviews are all about
the comparable work they've done. The reference checks are all about
the comparable work they've done.
In the end, you've spent hours understanding how what the candidates
have actually done, comparing it directly to your objectives. Even if
you don't really understand how they do it, you can see how what
they've done would help you.
I don't think there's any more magic to hiring an interaction designer
when you don't know anything about interaction design, as there is to
hiring a bookeeper when you don't know how to keep books. If you
clearly know what you need done (and that's the key part), then you
should have no trouble finding someone who has comparable experience
having done it already.
What a VP of Marketing hiring a UX person doesn't want to do is hire
someone with no previous comparable experience. Hiring folks who have
potential, but no previous experience, should only be done by a
manager who can act as a mentor and teacher.
Hope that helps,
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
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