the jujutsu of introducing usability to an organization
DESCRIPTION
Mark Maxted of Blue Coat Systems describes how understanding the "readiness" of an organization can affect your tactics for introducing usability and user-centered design. More info at www.chopsticker.comTRANSCRIPT
Organizational Readiness
mark maxtedSenior Principal Engineer
Blue Coat Systems
Tactics for Success
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Motivations
● Why do usability initiatives so often meet with only qualified success?
● Why did a technique I used with great success at one company fail miserably at the next?
● Why am I so frustrated?
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Dimensions of Readiness
● Technical● Process● Cultural● Product/Market
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Technical Readiness
● How flexible is the underlying architecture?
– How often do you hear “we'd have to change our architecture” in an engineering response?
– Can you easily change data presentations?
– Is business logic separated from the workflow?
– How many interfaces do you have to support?
● How agile is your interface toolkit?
● Low: business logic and presentation intertwined and hard coded.
● High: well layered, “evolvable” UI technology
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Architectural Readiness
concrete user interfaces
abstract interface
virtual machine
features and services
platform
platform independence
agile toolkit
application/ business logic
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Process Readiness
● Are corporate processes (and the process to change them) well defined?
● Do they incorporate usability?
– What is the process for generating product requirements?
– Who owns the lexicon?● Are processes for UI and underlying technologies
distinct?
● Low: ad hoc processes, requirements expressed as features, individual engineers dictate terminology
● High: requirements expressed as use stories
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Cultural Readiness
● Technophilia vs Interdisciplinary Respect
– We don't know what we don't know
– People who don't know this aren't ready● Use ad hoc demonstrations
● Do QA and Customer Service have a say in requirements? What role does Docs play?
● Low: engineering claims “we know our users”
● Medium: usability is about panel design
● High: focus is on end to end customer experience
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Product/Market Readiness
● Emerging technologies and markets are feature driven
– Audiences are poorly defined
– Management reacts to early adopters
● Mature technologies are solution driven
– Audiences are better defined
– Management can turn down “distractions”
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Tactical Summary
● Do's– assess your
organization's readiness– recognize inertia– have realistic
expectations– be patient and
adaptable– develop a roadmap– exploit opportunities to
fund your roadmap
● Don'ts– act too far ahead of
your organization's readiness
– try to change too many things at once
– spread yourself too thin.
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