Nothing is bigger than a usability policy

I have been following the debate and thought that I would chip in.

Mike I am about to embark on a large project which will put usability and
accessibility into the policy and processes of one of our large government
accounts. I work for EDS so if you (and any others interested) would like to
email me at:

[email protected]

I would be happy to get a dialogue and exchange of information going.

In my view there is nothing bigger than a usability policy; it is central to
the organisation change from a techno-centric to a user centred perspective.
I would argue that the correct name is a User centred design policy; as such
it should form the mission statement of "this is how we do things around
here now".

Hanging off this you need:

- A usability, user centred, human factors, user experience (choose title as
required) senior management champion(s).

- A user centred design or user experience strategy which sets out why, when
and how user centred activities take place, the standards, guidance and good
practices that have been adopted; the processes that are used, the benefits
gained, measures, the key roles, organisational interdependencies (e.g. role
of marketing, development, project managers, human factors experts), links
to other project support programmes (e.g. end user training or awareness,
business process change, culture change for internal staff in dealing with
e-customers etc), measurement of outcomes in terms of product value, costs
and benefits, usability techniques and methods

- A user centred design process that goes from cradle to grave: from concept
development to design and development, to testing, to maintenance and
enhancement to system retirement. This must include an audit trail of
decision making should issues need to be resolved later between the supplier
and client as well as the usual usability techniques e.g. user task
analysis, prototyping, usability testing etc.

For me a UCD or user experience policy is a high level overarching public
statement that steers the rest of the UCD or usability process. There is no
need to shy away from it, after all there have been loads of these things
written for techies to cover the structured methods and why they use them.

For me such policies have nothing to do with being usability police or
making guru statements from on high. They are about communicating the change
in direction to being user centred, and user experience centred (which is a
strong value)which a supplier organisation has adopted.

The key to their success is understanding where they fit in the UCD process
and what there purpose is. Without them and a UCD strategy and rigourous
process the most you can ever achieve, even with a concentration on product
value, is a few examples of good usability project practice which soon get
lost and forgotten as technocentric attitudes prevail.

Usability product value practices are about short term success whereas

User (experience) centred design policies are about sustained long term
success and organisational value change.

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