WebWord

Daniel Szuc pointed me to this question on IxDA:

How do you pitch UCD process (or design thinking)?

“How do you tell people what you are doing everyday as UX designer/researcher? How do you convince engineers/PMs/stakeholders/clients that the user-centered design is the right way to go?”

I think this is my favorite response…

“Start small and grow – start with a UX method that provides some real insights and then build around that. Sometimes it may not always be the perfect approach.”

It’s hard to make something amazing happen on a big scale. Take action, get your foot in the door and dazzle them with something small. Once you get traction then iterate and expand.

Related reading: Selling Usability

Gerry Gaffney of Information & Design recently interviewed me about Selling Usability, my new book about “sneaking” usability and user experience into organizations. Don’t miss it.
Here’s an excerpt…

Companies don’t really care about user experience and usability any more than, for example, they care about, let’s say thermodynamics, or electricity. A company doesn’t care about electricity. Usability is a means to an end for companies, that’s even if they think of it that way.

Companies care about profits, they care about customer satisfaction, they care about market share. And really it’s our job – we need to use our usability skills here – it’s our job to know what managers, marketers, product teams and perhaps VPs and CEOs – what they need. We should be positioning what we do to help them, and help drive the profits and the bottom line.

So this isn’t really an anti-usability issue, right? It’s not a problem for them to solve. It’s not that they are against usability. The problem is actually the problem of each usability professional. It’s each user experience professional looking at this, and they need to put on their thinking caps, they need to reverse the problem and say “What can we do to make ourselves more business savvy?”

That’s the challenge. I’m not trying to imply that companies don’t care about user experience. They care about the results of what we do very, very much, and we need to find really good ways of translating our outputs and our deliverables to something that makes sense to the folks that actually go after customers, drive market share and really the bottom line.

Don’t miss the Selling Usability interview with Gerry Gaffney:

• MP3 Version of the Interview (7.51MB)
• Read the Transcript of the Interview

SellingUsability.com is now live because Stefan Wobben of Concept7 convinced me to purchase that domain. (Thanks again, Stefan!)

On the new Selling Usability web site you will find direct links to the book on Amazon.com as well as the digital download version. I’ve also included several reader reviews plus a link to a PDF of two sample chapters.

If you’re going to refer to Selling Usability please simply point to that new site. It’s the best place for folks to get the latest and great information about the book.

Cheers,

~ John

I’ve never held a formal position as a usability professional. I’ve never been a UX Manager, Usability Specialist or Interaction Designer. All of my experience is just outside these formal roles.

I’ve done a bunch of usability consulting on my own. I’ve worked as a “hired gun” doing UX work for firms like MarketFace. And, I’ve written hundreds of usability articles, I’ve done dozens of presentations on UX topics and I’ve been running WebWord for more than 11 years now.

The interesting thing about my usability experience is that I see it mostly as an outsider. Despite my direct experience, most of my time is spent analyzing usability and purchasing UX as a software engineer or project manager.

In many ways, I’m the biggest public critic of usability as a profession. Many of my articles and blog entries poke holes in UX and usability specialists. Most of this is tough love. I’m just desperate to help UX’ers yet I end up being critical.

As a sidebar, I’m happy that Selling Usability is getting so much traction and that the reviews are 100% positive. I did everything I could to turn my constructive criticisms and complaining into a practical and useful book for usability and UX professionals. It worked!

I’m throwing all of these comments onto WebWord for a very important reason. Rather than complain or explain problems we should spend more time trying to make things right. It isn’t hard to turn a problem into an opportunity with a smart solution.

I could have complained about how hard it is to get other people to understand usability and UX. Many people have done this. In fact, in the past, I have done this a lot. It’s easy to complain. But I stopped and decided to focus on providing solutions.

There’s a related point here. When you’re running a usability study and you generate a report, spend some extra time providing potential solutions. Of course, you don’t want to literally dictate the new design but it’s your responsibility to give the team direction and positive energy. Don’t “dump and run” problems on the team. You can do better than that. You’ve got so much to give the team.

Stefan Wobben, founder and usability researcher at Concept7, was kind enough to write up a review of Selling Usability on Amazon. This is now the third 5-star review of the book.

Here’s an excerpt:

“Selling Usability will provide you with all the answers you need. The book is highly practical and will offer many tips which you can put into practice immediatly. The chapters are witty, comprehensive and concise.”

If you’re having problems selling usability inside your company, you’ll want to grab a copy of this book. It’s not just for usability specialists. It’s also useful for usability lab managers, usability consultants, and anyone involved in organizational change as it relates to user experience.

Purchase your own copy of SELLING USABILITY

Cheers, 

~ John

Reviews of Selling Usability have been excellent. It’s nice to know that my passion for usability and UX is not isolated. Indeed, based on the feedback, many people have been waiting a long time for a book like this.

There’s literally nothing on the market like this book.

Unlike Cost Justifying Usability I do not make any attempt to justify or apologize for usability. I do not use any complex math or bizarre computations. I do not try to help you put together an official business case.

Quite frankly this “frontal assault” approach only works a small percentage of the time. Who else has to justify their work or existence like this? Sure, we all have to put together data, metrics, and presentations. But, too many usability professionals and UX’ers are shy or otherwise embarrassed by what they do.

Unfortunately, it isn’t possible to simple Rise Up! and take over the company. There’s work to be done. My approach is sneaky. It’s subtle. And, it works. (It always does.)

To celebrate success, I’ve just released a PDF version of Selling Usability. It’s exactly the same content as what you’d find in the paperback version. However, there are three huge advantages:

• It’s 40% off the retail price of the paperback (only $14.95)
• You can instantly download the book after you purchase
• It’s the eco-friendly option (unless you print it out of course)

Buy the digital version of Selling Usability today. You can pay, download, and start reading in less than 3 minutes. Find out what everyone’s talking about.

Here’s some buzz about Selling Usability.

Peter Morville writes: “What do Niccolò Machiavelli and Mother Teresa have in common? They’d both be proud of John Rhodes for writing this book. Selling Usability is a delightfully sneaky guide to making the world a better place. It’s a “must read” for all user experience strategy and design folks within large organizations. And, it’s a lot of fun too!”

Peter Van Dijck writes: “If you’re doing UX work in a large organization, you should buy this book. And if you’re a UX consultant, you should too. It’s that simple. The book is worth it’s weight in gold: it gives you (as a UX person) insight in how to really get things done in large companies.”

Joe Dolson writes: “This book is not about usability. You’ll learn a lot about understanding and communicating the user experience by reading this book, but it’s not going to teach you how to study user interaction.”

I believe more reviews of the book will be showing up in the next 1-2 weeks. Great stuff!

Purchase Selling Usability for 20% off right now.

~ John