August 2003 Archives
Friday, August 8, 2003
by Mark Hurst
Get Good Experience by e-mail: e-mail update@goodexperience.com
Usability Professionals Must Disappear
Some professions are easier to label than others. Lawyers, doctors,
accountants, firemen, plumbers - these people can name their job
easily at a cocktail party.
Somehow "user experience practitioner" doesn't roll off the tongue so
easily. Hence the inevitable effort for UX-types to name what it is
they do: at conferences and in newsletters, for years, I've seen the
endless discussions. Should it be "usability professional"?
"Information designer"? "Interaction architect"? Some other
permutation?
Here's my proposal - easy to pronounce, easy to understand, just two
easy words: "Who cares?"
The fact is, every company is bound to call this group something
different. "User experience team," "customer experience task force,"
"user-centered design group." There's no use in trying to standardize
something that each company names on its own. You might as well ask
every company in the world to standardize the name of their technology
department. Is it "MIS"? Or maybe "IT"? Perhaps it's just
"Development," or maybe "Programming," or "the techies"? Once again,
the answer is "Who cares?" Each company chooses for itself.
It's true that user experience practitioners love to talk about
labelling. So why not talk endlessly about how to label user
experience itself?
Well, two reasons. At best, these endless discussions are
self-indulgent and distract practitioners from doing work with actual
value: instead of being user-centered, they're being UX-centered.
(To quote Miss Piggy, "Me me meeeeeee...") Big difference.
At worst, all the worry about naming the profession can harm how the
larger organization relates to the practitioner. The more highfalutin
your job title, the less the marketers, techies, and managers will
listen to what you say. ("Ahh, you're the user-centered interaction
usability architect? Right, very smart. Well, just drop your report on
my desk and go right on back to your cube in the corner... user boy.")
Now, there's no doubt that some organizations are better at valuing UX
than others. A few smart companies have appointed a VP of Customer
Experience and built a team around him or her (usually a "her," in my
experience) to monitor and improve the customer experience of the site
or product. These companies tend to perform much better than companies
without a customer experience team.
Still, I don't think that the name itself is the magic ingredient...
or at least, standardizing a name across the industry isn't going to
suddenly make practitioners more valued.
Here's the thing about user experience work: its success depends
primarily on the buy-in from everybody else in the larger
organization. The primary issue isn't what you're named, but what
results you're generating, and what buy-in you're getting from the
company.
This brings me to my own highfalutin solution to the real issue
usability professionals are trying to address - namely, that they're
not taken seriously enough in the organization:
Usability professionals must disappear.
Instead of singing "me me meeee" about their job title (and, for
that matter, their peculiar UX-centered research methods), usability
professionals should disappear - like any good interface - and
just serve the company and the various groups inside it.
In short, a good user experience practitioner is a facilitator -
someone who quietly (having disappeared) guides the process,
allowing knowledge to emerge, from users and the company alike.
Instead of coming in with the answers, or the framework, or (my
personal favorite) "the 200 rules of user experience design," they
should come in with their auditory organs turned up to eleven.
Listening.
As facilitators, truly caring about the organization and how it can
best serve its customers, practitioners will then be more valued.
After all, who do you take more seriously: the person with the
impressive job title who frets endlessly about their own issues and
loves telling you the answers, or the person who quietly listens to
you before saying anything?
link to this column
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Job Openings
Job openings are available in the e-mail version of Good Experience. Send a blank e-mail to update@goodexperience.com to sign up.
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This Is Broken update
Recently in This Is Broken (www.thisisbroken.com):
- T-Mobile support phone message (very amusing)
- Uncooperative neon sign
- E-mail-to-Web handoff
Find it all here: www.thisisbroken.com
Send in your own entries!
E-mail pictures and text to mark at goodexperience dot com.
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Fun Stuff
A special treat this week: a new video by Ze Frank, who spoke at the
Gel conference in May.
Gel attendees will remember that Ze was trying to load a video for
his presentation, but it didn't work. He's now posted it online
for the first time.
Here's the video. Turn the sound up.
It's an excerpt of yours truly, explaining bit literacy. Well,
trying to...
(By the way, Gel 2004 isn't sold out yet, but tickets are selling. You
can guarantee your spot right now, at the early bird price, by buying
here.)
Find more fun stuff at Ze Frank's website.
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Friday, August 1, 2003
by Mark Hurst
Get Good Experience by e-mail: e-mail update@goodexperience.com
Reader Mail
Last week's column, "Top Sites' User Experience Teams and Their
Challenge," drew several thoughtful responses from Good Experience
readers. I've pasted two below.
If you missed it, last week's column is here:
Howard Davis, of the University of Vermont, writes:
Your recent posting reminds me of department stores that used to
require you to pay for your purchase in the department where you
found the item. So, for example, only the "clerks" in the shoe
department could ring up the shoe sale.
I think organizations persist in believing that they're at the
epicenter of the customers' lives, as opposed to realizing that
being in business means being of service and understanding and
responding to customer needs. As you point out, most web site
organization dramatically reinforces this organization-centric
view of reality.
Steve Portigal writes that
...this is not unique to the Web. Schools that purchase textbooks
and standardized tests from the same publisher don't care or
understand that the text and assessment divisions are completely
separate (and competing, sometimes) arms of the organization in
different states, with different cultures and beliefs about the
educational system and their opportunities in it.
It's deadly stuff. If these companies can't stop focusing
internally long enough to see things from their customers' points
of view, they are going to have a tough time moving forward.
Lee McIntyre writes in response to my earlier column on user
experience and the organization:
http://www.goodexperience.com/columns/03/0620.org.html
I always enjoy your Good Experience newsletters, and I just had
to write in response to the June 20th edition regarding the
importance of learning "how to work with and change the
organization" as a UE practitioner. This skill is *so* critical,
and yet, as you aptly point out, it is never really addressed at
most conferences or in most handbooks. Can't figure out why - in
the 13 years I've been in this profession, this is by far the one
of the most important skills I've ever needed.
Even if I know exactly how to "fix" a UE problem, if I can't get
anyone to listen to me, it really doesn't amount to much.
Finally, Jill Murray replies to my comments on "The Matrix Reloaded":
Hey man, I liked the Matrix Reloaded. All that complaining and
the unnecessary invocation of Jar-Jar Binks were a real downer
after an otherwise useful newsletter.
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Job Openings
Job openings are available in the e-mail version of Good Experience. Send a blank e-mail to update@goodexperience.com to sign up.
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Fun Stuff
This is the coolest online game I've seen in awhile. One hint to get
you started: click stuff.
Fun etch-a-sketch page.
For the coyotes reading the newsletter, and the roadrunners that
love them... the one and only Acme product catalog.
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