Boxes And Arrows : The Design Behind the Design

Pioneering a User Experience (UX) Process

by B&A Staff and  Amy Hillman on 2007/06/19 | [23 Comments]

Maybe you’ve recently been hired by a company who wants to “do usability.” It could be that you’re a UI designer, business analyst, or front end developer who’s been conducting impromptu hallway usability tests and you’ve started to think you might be on to something. Or perhaps you’re a product manager who’s realized that the key to a better product is a better understanding of the people who use it. Whoever you are, wherever you are, one thing is certain: You’ve got your work cut out for you.

Creating a User Experience (UX) process can be a very rewarding journey; it can also be a nightmare if approached from the wrong angle. Initiating a culture-shift, overhauling existing processes, evangelizing, strategizing, and educating is an enormous undertaking. Often it’s a lonely path the UX advocate walks, especially if you are the only one who is driving that change from within the company. But that path is ripe with opportunities to improve your company’s product creation process, as well as the product itself.

So, where do you start? What approaches work? What pitfalls can be avoided? How can you stay motivated, encouraged, and professionally connected—even if you’re flying solo?

Why Create a User Experience (UX) Process?

Understanding why you should create a UX process is a good place to start. If you’re already in the initial stages of UX startup you probably have a number of answers to that question already. It’s important that you know why using a UX process is valuable because you’re going to be explaining it to everyone. A lot. Many companies are just starting to realize the value of keeping their end users in mind before, during, and after the product creation lifecycle. If your company hasn’t quite figured this out yet here are two of the most powerful arguments you can make:

• A UX process helps build products people want and need
  
  You’ll create a product that’s a good fit for the people who end up using it—instead of for the developer who built it or the CEO who envisioned it. This is particularly important if your users also spend their hard earned dollars to buy your product.
  
  
• A UXprocess saves time and money
  
  Your team will save valuable time and resources by getting it right, or mostly right, the first time. And they’ll be faster doing it.

Keep in mind that both arguments have a strong tie to something many people in your company already value: Money. Whether it’s money gained through sales or saved through efficiency, financial impact is a very tangible way to illustrate the value of UX activities.

Start Small

Starting small will keep you from biting off more than you can chew, but it also allows you to focus your attention on building your process from the ground up. You’ll be nurturing both your growing process, and the people with whom you work, as you go. A gradual introduction to UX methodologies is much more effective than trying to completely change everything about the existing process all at once.

If you attempt to immediately overhaul the existing process you risk overwhelming, intimidating, and offending many people who could otherwise be turned into UX allies. So pick a smaller, less visible project where you can start integrating new techniques while showing your team how to build products with your users in mind.

Be sure to document and track the progression of UX activities and outcomes so that you can use that information in the future to illustrate how your process works.

Find Business Drivers and Track Against Them

Simply put, numbers talk. Find out what your company’s goals are and align your UX goals accordingly. When you know what’s driving strategy in the finance group, or what targets the marketing team is aiming for, and you can show how your work helps achieve those goals, you’ll be speaking their language.

For example, if one of the primary initiatives company-wide is to reduce costs by reducing the number of tech support calls, make one of your primary UX goals for the next release improved usability and a higher rate of self-support. Get a current baseline for how many tech support calls are being received on the current product and at the end of your project do a comparative analysis for the reduction in tech support calls.

Plan UX Activities Upfront

Another great reason to pick a smaller project is that it’s more likely you’ll have some influence on the project planning. By working with your project manager in the early planning stage you’ll be able to prepare the team for the UX activities you will be leading. If you don’t show up early and stake a claim to the dates and gates on your project, you’ll end up squeezing your research and design activities into a process that already exists—without you.

Ideally, you’ll plan an ideation phase or “iteration 0” where you help clarify business requirements by researching the real people who use your product. Iteration 0 may include some initial conceptual design work as well. When project iterations begin, you’ll have negotiated what sorts of UX activities are going to take place as you move from one iteration to the next.

Go Deep, Not Wide

A common pitfall to avoid is spreading yourself across too many projects. If you’re the only person doing UI design and usability research, it’s tempting for project managers to want you to consult on all of their projects. Avoid this at all costs.

Distributing a single UX resource across multiple initiatives is destined for failure for two reasons.

First, by working broadly across many different projects, you compromise the quality of your UX work. You run the risk of producing mediocre results on many projects, rather than doing a great job on one or two projects. You need strong examples of success, especially if you’re trying to convince others why a UX process is valuable.

Second, you will rapidly become burnt out and frustrated because you never have the opportunity to impact any real change. When your role on a project is limited to someone emailing you for your opinion, or briefly running an idea past you without any deep contextual understanding of the project, it won’t take long for you to become disillusioned. Your role on a project needs to be more than just providing the UX seal of approval.

It’s difficult to find the balance between advocating a UX process and having to say no to some projects. You may feel like you’re delivering a mixed message because one day you’re explaining how important UX activities are and the next day you have to say no to a project. But here’s the twist: As demand increases, it provides more support for growing your UX team. Every time you have to say no in order to keep your focus deep, remind those around you that it’s a sign you probably need more UX resources.

Be Realistic and Flexible

Do a reality check and figure out how much support exists for UX activities in your organization. Then adjust your expectations accordingly. If many of the people with whom you work are new to the concepts of user-centered design and usability testing, then you probably won’t be able to spend months on ethnographic research or thousands of dollars flying around the world to conduct elaborate usability tests on site.

Stay flexible. Make your points and recommendations, but show that you can see all sides and are willing to compromise as needed. Avoid dogmatic thinking that says there’s only one way to correctly do usability research or design. At this stage it’s less important that you do everything by the book, perfectly, formally—and more important that you integrate the user’s perspective to make your product better. Keep your idealism in check and introduce people to UX methods gracefully instead of beating them over the head with it.

If you’re a perfectionist you may feel like nothing is being done the right way at first. There will be a lot of kinks to iron out before your UX process runs smoothly, so try to go with the flow during this awkward stage of your evolving process. Remind yourself that the smallest amount of UX activity is light years beyond no UX activity at all. In this early phase, even the smallest bit of user perspective can have a profound effect on the outcome of your product.

You’ve heard it a million times before: There’s a lot of low hanging fruit. Don’t get too caught up in worrying about how it’s being picked, just make sure it gets picked!

Watch Out for Toes, but Don’t Avoid Them

It’s inevitable that, over the course of building a UX process, you’ll bump into others who feel you’re encroaching into their area of contribution or expertise. No one wants to hear that their way of doing things results in a bad product or the company losing money. No one wants to hear you telling them your way is right and their way is wrong.

The key is to show, rather than tell; persuade, rather than dictate. Use a screen/video capture tool, such as Morae, to make video snippets of users struggling with that widget everyone on the team thought was so cool. Convince your developer that you can make her job easier and save her time by doing the conceptual design and sketching out some prototypes before she ever starts writing a line of code. Show your product manager that you can help him define his business requirements by talking to end users and finding out what their needs really are.

Once you’ve built credibility with the team and have diffused any potential rivalries, you’ll all be on a level playing field. Then they’ll look to you for your perspective, input, and expertise rather than being threatened by it.

Be Patient and Set Clear Expectations

Being patient can be one of the hardest things about building a new UX process. It doesn’t matter how committed you are, how many hours you work, or how persuasively you evangelize…it won’t happen overnight. It’s important to set realistic expectations with others, as well as yourself. Set clear, attainable goals with your manager at your yearly review. Review those goals together quarterly and make adjustments if needed. Communicate openly about deliverables and milestones with your project manager and other stakeholders. Then deliver.

With every expectation you meet, or exceed, your case for the UX process will be building momentum. Visibility and understanding will increase with every win you publicize. But be patient.

You’ll probably have days where you question whether you’re making a difference, whether you’re making any headway at all. You’ll have days where you feel frustrated and confused. When you start to question the impact you’re having, remind yourself how far you’ve come since the pre-UX days.

Get Creative

Because you’ll almost certainly have limited resources, it pays to get creative. Show your team that UX activities do not need to be expensive or time consuming.

• Is anyone in your company a representative user? Grab them and schedule a feedback session on your wireframes. There’s no need to recruit strangers to help with usability research unless your end users are highly specific and there are no representative users available.
• Do you need global perspectives but have no budget for travel? Conduct remote contextual interviews and usability sessions. Webcams and online software such as WebEx and UserView make it easy to connect to users all around the world and gather valuable information from them.
• Have you been told there won’t be a budget for hiring more UX professionals in the next few years? Teach your developers some UI design best practices, show business analysts how to conduct usability tests, lead participatory design sessions with your team. If you know you can’t hire more UX practitioners, start teaching others how to make good UX decisions.
• No budget for expensive software and research tools? It’s amazing how much you can learn using paper, pencils, pens, and sticky notes. Learn more about paper prototyping and guerilla HCI.
• Email video clips from usability sessions. This is always a great way to spread the UX message because it’s hard to argue with the real live people who are shown using your products.
• Make posters showing common UX mistakes and great UX solutions.

Document Your Wins, Then Publicize Ruthlessly

This is probably the most important thing you can do to sell the value of UX within your organization. This is where you put it all together. You’ve focused deeply on a small project, planning and tracking UX activities from beginning to end. You understand what’s motivating your company and you can show improvements in the user experience that support those goals. Because you measured the user experience of your original product against the new product your team just built, you can prove how much better the new product is for your users. And you can clearly tie those improvements to the UX process your team employed during the project.

Once you have one UX win, no matter how small, that you can clearly map to your process publicize that story ruthlessly throughout the company. Be sure to credit the entire team for their role in the UX work that contributed to the project’s success. And get ready for more work to come your way.