I work with large companies to enable eBusiness and web 2.0 by providing client assessments and planning, business process re-engineering and management consulting services.
All too often you walk into a meeting room and people are already offering solutions. You have the gentleman on the left; he brought a hacked PowerPoint with pasted up screen shots of competitor sites. What about the lady on the right? She’s showing everyone on the whiteboard how the web application should look. Then it hits you. What’s the problem we are trying to fix?
I actually heard someone say in a meeting:
“We are not supposed to work on a problem for this project; its all about implementing this solution.”
It’s funny now, but not when you are in the midst of advocating for the user, quality becomes vapor.
So why does quality become vapor? In the corporate world, the saying “something is better than nothing” is commonplace. Anyone that has actually observed a usability tests can attest to the fact that many times, “something” can be worse than nothing. The potential for bad usability is rarely seriously considered an opportunity cost for the enterprise.
“Something is better than nothing” is the result of lack of time. I’ve often heard a joke saying, “you can have quality, time or budget, just pick any two.” Most projects are needed yesterday and they are often in competition for dollars.
Can we bring quality back into the mix? Focus on the problem. If the problem is clearly identified, you can’t finish the project without delivering the right solution which has a greater chance of achieving quality.
I just read about Google’s four steps to better user experience:
eCommerce project manager Graham Cooke suggested a four step plan:
* Identify the problem - where people are falling through your site using data that goes beyond your visitor numbers
* Diagnose why people are falling through by listening to customers through user groups and online surveys.
* Test solutions on your customers
* Implement
Source: http://www.travolution.co.uk/blog/2009/04/googles-four-steps-to-better-u.php
That makes total sense to me and perhaps you. The only problem is that when you are in most User Experience teams of large corporations, it usually goes like this:
* Get briefing on solution you are supposed to implement
* Do your best to fit square peg into a round hole
* Salvage the project by scoping it down
* Haggle with IT about user experience
* Log and submit user experience defects that may get worked on some day
Am I being too cynical or have you experienced similar process?
I can’t tell you how many meetings I’ve sat in where we were discussing some solution and the “problem” was nowhere in the realm of anybody’s thought. Faces look at you with surprise when you finally stand up and say “Wait a minute, what’s the problem we are trying to solve?” Over the years, I’ve heard all kinds of unbelievable responses. I’ve heard things like “we are just here to implement the solution and not ask questions like that.”
In the traditional software development cycle in large companies, the “creative” people (who are prone to ask questions like this) are often plugged into the middle of a waterfall process that is very rigid and beyond the point where you can ask many questions. When I was working at usaa.com, we “creative” people often had a saying, “shut up and color.” It was a joke, but unfortunately, the joke was often on us.
Joe Dyer, one of my ex-colleagues from ussa.com who is now moved on to travelocity.com developed a presentation called IA Spy School. He draws a parallel between his day in the Air Force as an intelligence officer and information architecture. He is right, all about user experience starts with the contacts you have in your “spy” network. You can draw all the boxes and arrows you want but if you don’t have an audience for your “problem” questions, you are doomed to “shut up and color.”
So if you find yourself wanting to ask the big question, think about it first. Are you deep into the execution of a project, way beyond asking questions. How bad do you want to fall on your own sword? You might just want to save yourself some grief and begin working a network of people upstream from your waterfall project.
Bottom line, its not about what you know, its about who you know and who you can influence.
What do you do when you are in a meeting and its obvious nobody knows what the problem is?
Julia Roy (@juliaroy) turned me on to tumblr. Although I have another blog that is simple, using Posterous, I was compeled to start one on here.
So I’ve decided to write about my professional experience. I’ll talk about what methodologies I’ve used in the past to tackle user experience challenges. What’s worked, and what hasen’t worked. What my pet pieves are in the user experience industry.
I have no idea how often I will post, but stay tuned and please, be interactive with me.
Thanks,
Bo
