- About us
- Contact us: +1.641.472.4480, hfi@humanfactors.com
Cool stuff and UX resources
User experience design in a non user-centric company
In this newsletter, I will address a question that I am commonly asked by students of HFI’s four-course Certified Usability Analyst program.
By the end of the courses, most students have mastered the concepts and understand the user-centered design process. They are excited to get back to their various organizations so that they can put into practice what they have learned. However, a fair number of students still ask one very pertinent question: “I understood the process, mastered the theory, and also practiced the steps, but how do I go about doing user-centered design in my company?” Further probing almost always reveals that the organization in question does not have a strategic user experience mandate.
Even with a growing awareness about the importance of user-centricity there are still many companies that are not quite ready to start the journey. This newsletter aims to provide a few pointers to get the UX ball rolling in those organizations.
User Experience is not the End … It is a Means to the End
Most of the students who attend our courses are very passionate about user experience design. However, they tend to overestimate the role of UX within an organization. Hence, one of the key lessons for any UX practitioner is to understand where UX fits within the larger organization.
Very few stakeholders, if any, will invest in user experience just to make users happy. Their primary goal is to meet business objectives. This is not to say that good user experience is not important. On the contrary, creating a great user experience is one of the primary ingredients for meeting business objectives, but many stakeholders may not see the relationship in the short term.
Keeping this in mind, it is essential for you as a UX practitioner to approach user experience with the correct frame and use the language of business.
Understanding the Language of Business — Money
The best ways to communicate with business stakeholders is to understand and talk their language – return on investment. An excellent start to demonstrating the return on investment is to get a good grasp of the business objectives, especially in monetary terms: “How does the company intend to make and/or save money?” Framing the benefits of user experience within this context is critical to getting your voice heard.
All design and communication should then be centered around these business objectives. For example, instead of saying how a specific design change will make it easier for the user to learn the system (user-centric communication), you should communicate how the change will reduce the learning time and hence save the company money (business metric-centric communication).
Starting Small
Many practitioners’ largest problem is finding ways to incorporate user centered design methods when it is not part of the project’s scope. In these situations, it is important to remember that user-centered design is not an all or nothing process. Even within these tight constraints, there are practical steps you may take.
A great start is by doing what you probably already do: gather requirements. The key difference would be in the requirements you gather and how you document them. Instead of just collecting the functional requirements, find out as much as you can about the users. Most likely, you will not have access to the actual end users, and even if you did it would not be feasible to conduct traditional data gathering within the limited time and budget.
Instead, try getting this understanding from as many secondary sources as you can. Talk to the sales team – they have a good understanding about what customers are requesting. The marketing team will give you a good understanding of the customer segmentation and their buying behaviors. Customer service and help desk representatives can help you with key problem areas. Review analytics and web-logs to understand usage patterns and drop-off points. Hold meetings with subject matter experts to get a better grasp of the domain. This data is no substitute for actual data from end-users, but it is a start.
Once you have this information, it is important to document it in a manner that will directly support your project. Develop a set of user profiles, personas and scenarios. Try to identify the key needs and opportunities for your customers. If something is a best guess (most of it will be at this point), mark it as such. More importantly, identify and document what you don't know but need to know. Don't limit this documentation to your desk. Set up a central repository where others can use and contribute to the UX knowledgebase of your organization.
Even with this limited understanding of the users, it is possible to design based on best practices. Refer to online pattern libraries for examples. Don’t just look at competitors. Remember, your users live in a larger world of applications and websites that you can reference for design ideas. Peer reviews are very helpful at this stage as they help get a fresh set of eyes and a different perspective.
You probably will not end up with an amazing user experience, but it will be better than the alternative, so don’t expect (and set the expectation of) a 10-fold ROI. Remember: small steps, small gains.
Communicate and Educate
User experience is often as much about communication as it is about research and design. Developing your communication skills is very important because the way you present your design matters. Remember, good communication is about story telling. Engage your audience and take every opportunity to educate them about the ideal process.
Good communication and education is about involving your stakeholders at every step. Post your data gathering, however limited that may be, and be sure to communicate what you know and what you don’t know about the user. Make sure they understand the assumptions you are making. One company I taught at communicated their understanding of users by distributing personas and scenarios that they had printed on index cards that the employees (including managers and developers) could put on their desks.
During the design phase, make sure the stakeholders are involved and sharing their business objectives. (This not only helps get better buy-in, but also helps them appreciate the user-centered design process.) Conduct design workshops where they can provide their input and use that as a forum to explain your current process, its shortcomings, and the ideal process. When presenting designs make sure you are not just describing the widgets on the screen, but are talking about the end-users’ experience and how the design helps achieve the business objectives.
Measure and Demonstrate
The only way to communicate the effectiveness of the user-centered design process to business stakeholders is to showcase measurable return on investment. These measurements allow you to tie the UX efforts to the money a client earns or saves. In addition to the hard metrics around money earned (e.g., leads converted, average revenue per user, order value per user, etc.) and money saved (e.g., reduction in training time, reduced support costs, etc.) you can also measure softer metrics around user satisfaction (e.g., Net Promoter Score, USE Questionnaire, etc.) and user engagement (e.g., pages per visit, repeat visits, meaningful interactions, etc.).
It is important to identify the metrics to be measured at the onset of the project so that you can make a meaningful before and after comparison to showcase the benefits of your user-centered design activities. Showcasing project success through the lens of these business metrics will help you to make a business case for additional user-centered design activities.
Outside Resources
On a number of occasions, it is actually easier to get the ball rolling by using outside resources. For better or worse, a consultant usually holds more power, influence, and access than an employee of the organization. It is also easier and more politically prudent to hear the problems from a consultant than an insider. A good consultant not only can help evangelize user-centricity, but can also help with showcase projects and educational programs to create UX awareness.
Conclusions
It is interesting to note how each of these dimensions can have a considerable effect on global web design. From shallow vs. deep information architectures, access to information, motivation and trust, security and personal information, navigation, simplicity, graphical elements, to even color, among others.
This becomes especially important in contemporary settings when e-loyalty is critical in online transactions, and visual appeal is one of the ways to increase trust. Human beings instinctively make snap judgments about everything they see and try to rationalize it afterward, and so it becomes essential to get a positive first impression.
The idea of website globalization has two complementary processes. As per Periera and Singh (2005), globalization consists of website internationalization and website localization that work in tandem. While internationalization refers to the back-end processes of creating modular and accessible global website templates, localization refers to the front-end customization where websites are adapted to meet expectations of a culturally diverse user group.
In the e-commerce environment especially, the market is truly global even for a start-up. It is necessary to have a framework that allows cross-cultural design and usability as part of the development life cycle of any website. There will soon be a need for creating tools that allow for cultural versioning to suit global businesses and their agenda to communicate effectively to the local user. Involving cultural factors in the design process increases the aesthetic value, perceivable quality and behavioral intention in the users.
Message from the CEO, Dr. Eric Schaffer — The Pragmatic Ergonomist
Thanks, Satyam.
In the current race to excellence and maturity in user experience design we have to remember that there are laggards. And you provide some great advice for practitioners who find themselves trying to move such organizations forward.
You can make progress. You can show results. But I would also say that your main target is to mobilize an executive champion. We have seen executives mobilized from good demonstrations of design impact within an organization.
But today, you can directly reach out to your executives. I am just now sending some executives copies of “Outside In – The Power of Putting Your Customers at the Center of Your Business.” Harley Manning and his crew at Forrester did a great job of motivating the C-Level.
At HFI we often help out with management briefings that are targeted to the executive suite. I like to see those customized to show organization-specific examples, but also to address organization-specific misconceptions. It is interesting how a single idea can kill a program to develop a customer-centric practice. I recently found one client where executives did not understand how UX work is different from marketing. Other organizations have the idea that UX is common sense and that an impassioned speech from the CEO is all that is needed. Those types of misconceptions are pretty easy to dispel in an entertaining 90-minute session.
And Satyam, you are telling the truth; executives are more likely to listen to consultants than internal staff.
Leave a comment here
Reader comments
Monica
Satyam, I particularly liked your statement - 'User experience is often as much about communication as it is about research and design.'
Based on my experience I second the notion, often just knowing what can be done is not enough if you are not able to communicate and in turn convince the stakeholders to take cognizance of the resulting benefits.
Today, as the UX teams within the organizations are growing, communication seems to play an important role and if you can communicate well, you have won have the battle, from a UX perspective as well as team building. As Eric rightly pointed out, having an Executive Champion helps, but sometimes getting an external consultant on board is very difficult, especially till the point in time when you can really provide substantial ROI.
Satyam, your article is an actual representation of the steps that I am taking to build a team in my Company. I am sure many readers of this article would be nodding as they read it concurring with what you have written and gaining confidence that they are on the right track. Thanks.
Sameer
Hi Satyam, I am very fortunate to attend your sessions last sept while attending the all four courses of CUA program. Presently i am trying to implement the UX principles in a reputed organization as a consultant. i think this was the very appropriate time for me to read your article. It certainly rejuvenated my passion towards usability and gave me a more clearer path.I was a bit distracted and de- motivated due to some frictions and unsupportieveness from some individuals, who think UX as a not required feature. But your article have certainly charged me again to carry on my path of UX implementation.
Subscribe
Sign up to get our Newsletter delivered straight to your inbox
Privacy policy
Reviewed: 18 Mar 2014
This Privacy Policy governs the manner in which Human Factors International, Inc., an Iowa corporation (“HFI”) collects, uses, maintains and discloses information collected from users (each, a “User”) of its humanfactors.com website and any derivative or affiliated websites on which this Privacy Policy is posted (collectively, the “Website”). HFI reserves the right, at its discretion, to change, modify, add or remove portions of this Privacy Policy at any time by posting such changes to this page. You understand that you have the affirmative obligation to check this Privacy Policy periodically for changes, and you hereby agree to periodically review this Privacy Policy for such changes. The continued use of the Website following the posting of changes to this Privacy Policy constitutes an acceptance of those changes.
Cookies
HFI may use “cookies” or “web beacons” to track how Users use the Website. A cookie is a piece of software that a web server can store on Users’ PCs and use to identify Users should they visit the Website again. Users may adjust their web browser software if they do not wish to accept cookies. To withdraw your consent after accepting a cookie, delete the cookie from your computer.
Privacy
HFI believes that every User should know how it utilizes the information collected from Users. The Website is not directed at children under 13 years of age, and HFI does not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from children under 13 years of age online. Please note that the Website may contain links to other websites. These linked sites may not be operated or controlled by HFI. HFI is not responsible for the privacy practices of these or any other websites, and you access these websites entirely at your own risk. HFI recommends that you review the privacy practices of any other websites that you choose to visit.
HFI is based, and this website is hosted, in the United States of America. If User is from the European Union or other regions of the world with laws governing data collection and use that may differ from U.S. law and User is registering an account on the Website, visiting the Website, purchasing products or services from HFI or the Website, or otherwise using the Website, please note that any personally identifiable information that User provides to HFI will be transferred to the United States. Any such personally identifiable information provided will be processed and stored in the United States by HFI or a service provider acting on its behalf. By providing your personally identifiable information, User hereby specifically and expressly consents to such transfer and processing and the uses and disclosures set forth herein.
In the course of its business, HFI may perform expert reviews, usability testing, and other consulting work where personal privacy is a concern. HFI believes in the importance of protecting personal information, and may use measures to provide this protection, including, but not limited to, using consent forms for participants or “dummy” test data.
The Information HFI Collects
Users browsing the Website without registering an account or affirmatively providing personally identifiable information to HFI do so anonymously. Otherwise, HFI may collect personally identifiable information from Users in a variety of ways. Personally identifiable information may include, without limitation, (i)contact data (such as a User’s name, mailing and e-mail addresses, and phone number); (ii)demographic data (such as a User’s zip code, age and income); (iii) financial information collected to process purchases made from HFI via the Website or otherwise (such as credit card, debit card or other payment information); (iv) other information requested during the account registration process; and (v) other information requested by our service vendors in order to provide their services. If a User communicates with HFI by e-mail or otherwise, posts messages to any forums, completes online forms, surveys or entries or otherwise interacts with or uses the features on the Website, any information provided in such communications may be collected by HFI. HFI may also collect information about how Users use the Website, for example, by tracking the number of unique views received by the pages of the Website, or the domains and IP addresses from which Users originate. While not all of the information that HFI collects from Users is personally identifiable, it may be associated with personally identifiable information that Users provide HFI through the Website or otherwise. HFI may provide ways that the User can opt out of receiving certain information from HFI. If the User opts out of certain services, User information may still be collected for those services to which the User elects to subscribe. For those elected services, this Privacy Policy will apply.
How HFI Uses Information
HFI may use personally identifiable information collected through the Website for the specific purposes for which the information was collected, to process purchases and sales of products or services offered via the Website if any, to contact Users regarding products and services offered by HFI, its parent, subsidiary and other related companies in order to otherwise to enhance Users’ experience with HFI. HFI may also use information collected through the Website for research regarding the effectiveness of the Website and the business planning, marketing, advertising and sales efforts of HFI. HFI does not sell any User information under any circumstances.
Disclosure of Information
HFI may disclose personally identifiable information collected from Users to its parent, subsidiary and other related companies to use the information for the purposes outlined above, as necessary to provide the services offered by HFI and to provide the Website itself, and for the specific purposes for which the information was collected. HFI may disclose personally identifiable information at the request of law enforcement or governmental agencies or in response to subpoenas, court orders or other legal process, to establish, protect or exercise HFI’s legal or other rights or to defend against a legal claim or as otherwise required or allowed by law. HFI may disclose personally identifiable information in order to protect the rights, property or safety of a User or any other person. HFI may disclose personally identifiable information to investigate or prevent a violation by User of any contractual or other relationship with HFI or the perpetration of any illegal or harmful activity. HFI may also disclose aggregate, anonymous data based on information collected from Users to investors and potential partners. Finally, HFI may disclose or transfer personally identifiable information collected from Users in connection with or in contemplation of a sale of its assets or business or a merger, consolidation or other reorganization of its business.
Personal Information as Provided by User
If a User includes such User’s personally identifiable information as part of the User posting to the Website, such information may be made available to any parties using the Website. HFI does not edit or otherwise remove such information from User information before it is posted on the Website. If a User does not wish to have such User’s personally identifiable information made available in this manner, such User must remove any such information before posting. HFI is not liable for any damages caused or incurred due to personally identifiable information made available in the foregoing manners. For example, a User posts on an HFI-administered forum would be considered Personal Information as provided by User and subject to the terms of this section.
Security of Information
Information about Users that is maintained on HFI’s systems or those of its service providers is protected using industry standard security measures. However, no security measures are perfect or impenetrable, and HFI cannot guarantee that the information submitted to, maintained on or transmitted from its systems will be completely secure. HFI is not responsible for the circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures relating to the Website by any Users or third parties.
Correcting, Updating, Accessing or Removing Personal Information
If a User’s personally identifiable information changes, or if a User no longer desires to receive non-account specific information from HFI, HFI will endeavor to provide a way to correct, update and/or remove that User’s previously-provided personal data. This can be done by emailing a request to HFI at hfi@humanfactors.com. Additionally, you may request access to the personally identifiable information as collected by HFI by sending a request to HFI as set forth above. Please note that in certain circumstances, HFI may not be able to completely remove a User’s information from its systems. For example, HFI may retain a User’s personal information for legitimate business purposes, if it may be necessary to prevent fraud or future abuse, for account recovery purposes, if required by law or as retained in HFI’s data backup systems or cached or archived pages. All retained personally identifiable information will continue to be subject to the terms of the Privacy Policy to which the User has previously agreed.
Contacting HFI
If you have any questions or comments about this Privacy Policy, you may contact HFI via any of the following methods:
Human Factors International, Inc.
PO Box 2020
1680 highway 1, STE 3600
Fairfield IA 52556
hfi@humanfactors.com
(800) 242-4480
Terms and Conditions for Public Training Courses
Reviewed: 18 Mar 2014
Cancellation of Course by HFI
HFI reserves the right to cancel any course up to 14 (fourteen) days prior to the first day of the course. Registrants will be promptly notified and will receive a full refund or be transferred to the equivalent class of their choice within a 12-month period. HFI is not responsible for travel expenses or any costs that may be incurred as a result of cancellations.
Cancellation of Course by Participants (All regions except India)
$100 processing fee if cancelling within two weeks of course start date.
Cancellation / Transfer by Participants (India)
4 Pack + Exam registration: Rs. 10,000 per participant processing fee (to be paid by the participant) if cancelling or transferring the course (4 Pack-CUA/CXA) registration before three weeks from the course start date. No refund or carry forward of the course fees if cancelling or transferring the course registration within three weeks before the course start date.
Cancellation / Transfer by Participants (Online Courses)
$100 processing fee if cancelling within two weeks of course start date. No cancellations or refunds less than two weeks prior to the first course start date.
Individual Modules: Rs. 3,000 per participant ‘per module’ processing fee (to be paid by the participant) if cancelling or transferring the course (any Individual HFI course) registration before three weeks from the course start date. No refund or carry forward of the course fees if cancelling or transferring the course registration within three weeks before the course start date.
Exam: Rs. 3,000 per participant processing fee (to be paid by the participant) if cancelling or transferring the pre agreed CUA/CXA exam date before three weeks from the examination date. No refund or carry forward of the exam fees if requesting/cancelling or transferring the CUA/CXA exam within three weeks before the examination date.
No Recording Permitted
There will be no audio or video recording allowed in class. Students who have any disability that might affect their performance in this class are encouraged to speak with the instructor at the beginning of the class.
Course Materials Copyright
The course and training materials and all other handouts provided by HFI during the course are published, copyrighted works proprietary and owned exclusively by HFI. The course participant does not acquire title nor ownership rights in any of these materials. Further the course participant agrees not to reproduce, modify, and/or convert to electronic format (i.e., softcopy) any of the materials received from or provided by HFI. The materials provided in the class are for the sole use of the class participant. HFI does not provide the materials in electronic format to the participants in public or onsite courses.