a kit for building user experience teams in r&d organizations
DESCRIPTION
Paul Sherman "A Kit For Building User Experience Teams in R&D Organizations" Presented at UPA 2009, Portland OR June 11 2009TRANSCRIPT
Paul Sherman Sherman Group User Experience
A Kit For Building User Experience Teams Within Product & Service Organizations
I could do the UX kit spiel in less than 5 minutes.
It’s actually quite a boring presentation.
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What’s interesting is why I needed one, why you probably need one… and what we should be doing about this.
The sad truth about the need for a “UX kit” The kit itself A discussion about launching UX teams and spreading UX in medium to large orgs
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User experience practice needs to be embedded more securely into product development lifecycle activities.
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Despite what we may think, UX is still poorly integrated into product ideation, design, and development activities.
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Like Jared said in his UPA 2009 keynote, there are gaps in our field.
I believe that one of them is the lack of organizational structure and process guidelines.
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Why isn’t there good stuff out there on how to integrate UX teams into organizations?
There are discussions. A few books. But there doesn’t seem to be many lively, ongoing discussions about UX and organizational structures, cultures, etc.
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But isn’t setting up a team a precondition to actually DOING user experience work?
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1. It’s a trivial problem… I’m stupid and everyone gets this stuff but me.
Note: this is a definite possibility.
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2. It’s a particularly thorny problem or a problem that our field is not equipped to work on.
But we have so many research psychologists in our ranks!
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3. It’s just not as interesting or sexy as other problems in our field.
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1. It’s a trivial problem… I’m stupid and everyone gets this stuff but me.
2. It’s a particularly thorny problem or a problem that our field is not equipped to work on.
3. It’s just not as interesting or sexy as other problems in our field.
I choose #3
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…always working on the unsexy problems.
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I’ve worked for several organizations that claimed to do UX.
Some of them actually did…
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Some orgs *thought* they were doing UX.
But what they were really doing could be called “UX in name only.”
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A cargo cult is a type of religious practice that may appear in tribal societies in the wake of interaction with technologically advanced, non-‐native cultures.
The cults are focused on obtaining the material wealth of the advanced culture through magical thinking, religious rituals and practices…
17 <lazy>Yes I took this from Wikipedia.</lazy>
Cargo cults … conduct rituals imitating the behavior they have observed among the holders of the desired wealth in order to receive the wealth themselves.
18 <lazy>Yes I took this from Wikipedia.</lazy>
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21 A cargo cult in Second Life?!? Cool.
The term "cargo cult" is invoked as an English language idiom to mean any group of people who imitate the superficial exterior of a process or system without having any understanding of the underlying substance.
22 <lazy>Yes I took this from Wikipedia.</lazy>
Some orgs do something resembling UX… but it’s not really UX.
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Admit it…you’ve seen this too.
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At my former company I was asked to help put together UX teams in other product groups.
It took me one failure to realize that I needed to give them more than:
“You need a user researcher and an interaction designer and a usability analyst.”
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I did what PhD’s do best: I wrote a paper.
And then I ate my own dog food and cut it down by 2/3.
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So people would actually read it.
Senior managers and directors who needed advice and consultation on how to set up a UX team.
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Most had no idea that they would have to change processes and procedures to benefit from UX.
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I know!
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Service Lifecycle Phase Description Provides:
Contextual inquiry Ideation Investigation of users’ goals, objectives, tasks, and limitations/constraints; at the users’ place of business (or other appropriate use context).
Rich descriptions of users’ goals, motivations, environment.
Task analysis Ideation Step-by-step, granular identification of users’ work tasks. Details of the users’ processes.
User profiling Ideation Detailed reports of real users; what they do, how they do it, etc.
A “library” of user profiles that can be used to guide design.
Persona creation Ideation An abstracted description of users, based on the attributes of real users.
A “design target” specifying who the design is aimed at.
Role/task matrix Task/object matrix Task frequency & criticality ratings
Design
Additional details about who does what in a particular environment, as well as the importance of particular tasks. “Quasi”-quantitative information
about users, roles, tasks, etc.
Scenarios Use cases Process flows
Design Designs describing the flow or transformation of information through a system, and how the system and user interact with each other.
Information about how a design should work in the “real world” when implemented.
Early-phase usability testing Design
Testing the process flows and scenarios to ensure that they meet real users’ needs.
Validation of the design and correction opportunities.
Wireframes & prototypes
Validation & documentation
A lo- or medium-fidelity representation of the feature or product.
A working system that can be tested in late-phase usability testing.
UI / interaction spec Validation & documentation
The formal, complete documentation of the feature or product’s user interface.
A specification to code and inspect against.
Visual design Validation & documentation
Formal documentation of the visual design for the product or feature.
A specification to code and inspect against.
Late-phase usability testing
Validation & documentation
Usability testing using a working prototype or mockup. Validation of the design and correction opportunities.
Summative usability testing
End-of-cycle validation
Usability testing of a finished version of the product, measuring key indicators such as average time-on-task, error rate, etc.
Information to feed into the next lifecycle’s activities.
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I provided crazy amounts of templates, data sheets, recruiting forms, report formats, etc.
Note: when you steal from me, you’re stealing twice…
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Hire at least 3 direct contributors – user researcher/usability analyst, interaction designer, visual designer – or more, depending on the size of your product.
Hiring a manager or a director is also highly recommended.
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Budget for between US$10,000 and US$60,000 in research expenses, depending on the size of your product team and how many products you support.
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You can spend as little as US$1,000 or upwards of US$75,000 on usability and user research equipment.
In any case, build the team and budget the research dollars first.
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Be aware that you will HAVE to change your ideation, design and development processes in order to successfully implement user experience.
If you don’t explicitly make room for design research, ideation and iteration in your processes, you will not be successful in implementing user experience practices.
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Meh.
At first, anyway.
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It took about a year. But eventually the product groups started making the transition to more fully incorporating UX activities.
They didn’t always go as far as my team. But they went further than they had ever gone before.
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Strategic user experience
Agile and other methods
How to deal with force reductions
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My UX kit has gaps. It doesn’t cover smaller orgs or startups.
Use at your own risk!
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Absolutely.
It helped several teams avoid making mistakes that organizations typically make when integrating UX teams into existing processes.
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Kit: ShermanUX.com/Files/UXKit/UX_Kit_Jun09.doc
This preso: ShermanUX.com/Files/UXKit/UX_Kit_Jun09.pdf
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What are your experiences doing this sort of thing?
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Paul Sherman Sherman Group User Experience www.shermanux.com [email protected] Twitter: pjsherman
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