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Rogel Ragadio
Our company follows one basic but vital premise regarding our products – 'Simpler is Better...'."
by Douglas Gorney
Rogel Ragadio was introduced to the concept of Usability in 2000 while working as a senior UI designer with a U.S. software company. "The first time I learned about usability, I knew right then – THIS is what's missing in our company's software development process," says Rogel. From that point, he started reading books on the subject and used the internet to gain more knowledge and grow his expertise. Armed with new-found knowledge, he started doing brown bag sessions to spread usability principles within his company. "It was not an easy task convincing my peers, as they saw it as extra work, time, and effort," he recalls. But with his patient evangelizing, the whole company came to realize the true benefit of usability. And for the next 7 years, the entire project team - Business Analysts, Design Team, and Development – focused on users' needs.
Rogel didn't stop there. Understanding the benefits usability brings to any company, he felt obligated to spread user centered design to a wider audience. And in October 2002, he wrote an article in a widely-circulated Philippine newspaper on Usability. "During that time, the concept of usability was seldom heard in the software industry in the Philippines. Unfortunately, I cannot say usability has gained much momentum in our country today. Yet at the time, I thought I needed to do what I could to create awareness of its importance."
His passion for making desktop and web applications work made him strive for more, and in the summer of 2007, he traveled to Mumbai, India to take HFI courses become a Certified Usability Analyst. Now working as a Senior Usability Analyst for Lawson Software, he says, "It is vital I show the entire company the
importance of usability and the value it brings in terms of efficiency in the development process and company's return on investment." My experiences over the years, and the formal training I received from HFI, helped my team improve the user experience of our products and motivate stakeholders to "buy-in" to the process."
He says, "Our company has incorporated user centered design (UCD), expert reviews, prototyping, and visual design into the design process. And at the onset we saw the benefits it brings to the efficiency of our development process. These processes proved to promote strong collaboration within the product team. Our visual designer appreciates that he can clearly see and understand the flow of the system using the clickable prototype which significantly reduced the time he spends on the visual design of pages. And the high fidelity prototype works wondrously to demo the products to our customers, and in return, get feedback without spending so much time on development."
"Our company follows one basic but vital premise regarding our products – 'Simpler Is Better.' Learning everything we can about our users, their behaviors, attitudes, and even emotions, helps us define the products and experiences we create."
"I have always believed our products' user experience will be a work in progress, but whatever changes it may bring... one thing is for sure. Our Users Come First!"
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