I’m announcing…

Selling Usability: User Experience Infiltration Tactics.

But first, let me tell you the story…

So once again I need to apologize. It’s been too long since I posted a note on WebWord. As usual, I have a good excuse. (I hope that you agree with me.)

For the last few years I’ve been working on a book. Last summer I took off an entire week to complete the rough draft. On top of that, I’ve spent months and months revising it. Getting all the bugs iron out; yes, I’m sure there are still some issues.

But it’s done now.

Before I talk about the book give me a minute or two tell you a story. I started my career working in a place where usability and user experience were pretty much rejected. It took me a long time to prove that what I did would make a difference to the company and the bottom line.

I guess it wasn’t so much that usability was rejected. It was more like, my peers and management thought that there were better ways to spend time and money. Like many people — perhaps you — I needed to justify usability.

I spent months and months taking the “frontal assault” approach where I crafted profit scenarios, generated literal ROI numbers, and fought hard to prove that usability was worth the investment. It was a struggle. It worked in the end, but it was a challenge.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that that I needed to find new ways to inject usability into an organization. So I developed strategies and specific tactics to get people to love usability. I turned my back on the frontal assault in my efforts to sell usability to other people. I basically stopped justifying usability but I started to get other people love it.

In plain terms, I suppose you could say that justifying usability is top down thinking. It’s playing their game, not mine. What I do now is work from the bottom up, person by person. I pick just the right opportunities. I fight the smart fights and my long term goals are clear in my mind.

By the way, I don’t really believe that I’m fighting a war. I do not believe that it’s us versus them. That would be disingenious. It’s also not productive or realistic. However, people outside of usability don’t understand it very well. Yes, there absolutely are some managers, developers, and executives who get it. (You know who you are. So thank you, ladies and gentlemen.)

So, let’s bring this full circle. I took all my tactics and poured them into Selling Usability. It’s not perfect, but I do think that pretty much any usability professional will want this book. I guarantee that you will learn something new about getting usability into your organization.

I highly recommend that you grab a copy today.

~ John

p.s. Peter Van Dijck’s review of “Selling Usability: User Experience Infiltration Tactics”