Re: Re: Making the Case for Usability (Jared Spool)

Laura,
Following you comments
I am doing both business consulting and usability for 20 years

The approach I use is:

after field studies, I list the problems found in two categories (in scope
and out of scope).

I call them facts (organization find the word problem a bit negative)  and I
make facts and finding session with executive . In large organization that
may be 4,5  or more vp

I express fact along the following example

ex., "Risk manager (employees)  flip to the third pages to get
the repayment information  to make their decision". I also avoid any
abstraction (primary information. secondary information...)

The trick is there" the facts (problems ) must be presented without any
adverb or adjective but as pure facts

it is also important to eb aligned with the business objective (ex., lending
money...) selling more... forget the technical crap

I then add quote from employees (also i don't use the
usability terminology but the internal business terminology)

I use screen shot or image to illustrate in addition to quotes

Then I expose the impact of each facts

For example:

Impact: risk of omission or 10% of the employes don't read the second pages,
etc
Also provide best practice based on human factors

I usually have about 50 to 80 problems after a field study

I guaranty you that if you list problems in factual manner, express their
impact and deliver a good story around them, things that were not supposed
to move will move even in the most bureaucratic environment.


Francois Aubin
CEO
CognitiveGroup



On Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 5:06 PM, Laura Malone <[email protected]> wrote:

> I don't know if anyone has mentioned John Rhodes new book "Selling
> Usability." It's basically a handbook of Guerilla tactics for "usability
> infiltration tactics." I'm reading it now and I'm sure you would find lots
> of helpful insight there. He takes a practical, yet political approach. One
> of his primary messages is not to try to sell it head-on, but to adopt the
> language of your company's culture. For instance, don't use the term
"users"
> but instead "customers" -- people the decision makers and influencers
really
> care about. Also, figure out how usability contributed to the results of
> successful projects to usability, (even if it wasn't called that) and
> promote it vigorously.
>
>  Laura Malone
>
>
>
>
>
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>   1. Re: Making the Case for Usability (Jared Spool)
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> Message: 1
> Cc: <[email protected]>
> From: Jared Spool <[email protected]>
> To: RH <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: [BayCHI Discussions] Making the Case for Usability
> Date: Sat, 13 Jun 2009 13:49:44 -0700
>
> On Jun 10, 2009, at 11:29 AM, RH wrote:
>
> > Can anyone share any thoughts or studies around justifying usability
> > research within a large corporate environment? If so, it would be
> > greatly
> > appreciated. Specifically, I9m interested in ROI for performing
> > usability
> > and user experience work for Web sites or applications versus not
> > doing so.
>
> In my experience, ROI arguments never work. They are only
> justifications for already-made-decisions. If someone doesn't want to
> do something, the most persuasive ROI argument still won't convince
> them.
>
> The real trick is to follow the money. When there's poor usability or
> user experiences, it usually impacts the organization on its bottom
> line. (Lost sales, increased support costs, or extra development work
> from rework, for example.)
>
> When there's money that's being lost on the bottom line, there's
> usually someone in the organization already charged with recovering
> those losses. Find that person and you've got your champion.
>
> I wrote about this in more depth here:
> The Cost of Frustration
> http://www.uie.com/articles/cost_of_frustration/
>
> and here:
> A Recession Strategy for Web Apps
> http://www.uie.com/articles/recession_strategy_webapps/
>
> Hope that helps,
>
> Jared
>
> Jared M. Spool
> User Interface Engineering
> 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845
> e: [email protected] p: +1 978 327 5561
> http://uie.com  Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks  Twitter: @jmspool
> UIE Roadshow: Seattle, Denver, DC in June: http://is.gd/gxwe
>
>
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--

Francois Aubin
Cell: (514) 707-8856
Tel : (514) 861-1212
-------------------------------------------------
Cognitive Group Inc.

1155 Reni Livesque West - Suite 2500
Montrial, Quibec
Canada H3B 2K4
-------------------------------------------------
[email protected]
www.cognitivegroup.com
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