The User Experience Team of One
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• For people at the most senior level in the organization, getting access to them and finding a way to connect your passion with their priorities may be understandably more daunting.
Two good paths for connecting with these kinds of people are 1) under the guise of sharing and briefing them on project work and 2) connecting with them through the people who work directly for them. In either case, you may need to work with other people in the pyramid—to get yourself invited to a project update meeting, for example, or to get to know people at lower levels and ask them to help you represent your message higher up in the organization.
Tips and Tricks for Pyramid Evangelism
• Give it time. Be patient with yourself and other people, and don’t necessarily expect that one conversation will be enough to win support and a home for UX. One of the most important lessons for UX teams of one is that a UX practice isn’t built by delivering great projects (although it certainly doesn’t hurt); it’s built through relationships, trust, and goodwill over time. If you arm yourself with that expectation from the beginning, you will have the endurance, patience, and flexibility to build a good idea into a flourishing practice.
• If you work remotely... It’s definitely easier to build relationships face-to-face. If you’ll be meeting with other members of your team in person any time soon, think ahead about whom you’d like to meet with, and drop them a note in advance to set up a little extra time with them while you’re there.
If You Only Do One Thing...
The methods in this chapter are all focused on building visibility and support for UX, whether that’s project-by-project, with “Mini Case Studies,” or moment-by-moment, with “Bathroom UX.” The ultimate goal of all these methods is to built rapport and goodwill with others who could be potential supporters of UX—or, in a word, to build relationships.
So if you only have time to do one method, focus on building your relationships with pyramid evangelism. And if you don’t have time for the whole pyramid, start by identifying a few key supporters and ask them to lunch. It will lay the foundation for more work together in the future. Even more importantly, it will help you feel that even though you may be a UX team of one, you are certainly not alone.
PHOTO BY CHRISTIAN LAU (FLICKR)
CHAPTER 10
What’s Next?
The Evolution of UX
The Endurance of Design
The Secret Agenda of the UX Team of One
If You Only Do One Thing...
The idea for this book was born in 2008. That’s when I first saw that there were people who, like me, felt that they were staking out a user experience practice in a place where it had not previously existed. It is now five years later, and a lot has changed in the user experience field.
The Evolution of UX
Five years ago, Web and software design were the standard. Today, mobile and app design are taking the lead. Five years ago, it was more common to talk about user experiences as existing within the context of a single channel or touch point. Today, we understand that a digital product is often a full, multichannel experience, and that our job is to give people a seamless product experience even as they jump from PC to mobile to tablet and back again. Even the concept of PC, mobile, and tablet is, ultimately, very 2008. Today, digital experiences are embedded in our homes, in our cars, and in what we wear on our bodies. Today, the very idea of a stand-alone user experience seems old-fashioned. Open APIs mean that our products now exist in an interconnected ecosystem of interoperable services. The user experiences enabled by that ecosystem are sometimes awesome and, more often, still pretty fragmented.
All of this change just means more opportunities for UX teams of one. It’s five years later, and there are now more UX education options, more UX practitioners, and more UX jobs than ever. Undoubtedly, many of these jobs will require teams of one who are prepared to lead multifunctional teams to better designs. And how will they do this? By focusing on the durable value and purpose of design.
The Endurance of Design
Design is the act of creating new solutions under constrained circumstances, whether those constraints are aesthetic, technological, or resource-driven. That may sound like a restriction, but actually it’s a gift. Constraints, in the end, are a designer’s friend. They give you boundaries, sure, but those boundaries become landmarks of inspiration that are just as instrumental for expanding your thinking as they are for limiting it.
For UX teams of one, constraints largely come in the form of other people. The product managers, engineers, marketers, and decision-makers you work with to put products into the world challenge you to be creative within constraints.
Successful teams of one know that this is the role that their teams and colleagues play, and like a master designer working with the best materials, they work within these constraints in a purposeful way. Just as much as your non-UX counterparts constrain what’s possible, they also shine a light on opportunities for improving user experience. They provide supplemental thinking to your own singular point of view. They help you be a better designer. When handled confidently and patiently, your colleagues can become your own landmarks for inspiration, and they can help you make far more impact than you could on your own.
The Secret Agenda of the UX Team of One
As much as a book can have a secret agenda, here is this book’s secret agenda: to give you the confidence and ready tools to take on the non-UX world as unwitting allies, essential and welcome co-conspirators in creating the human-inspired, technology-enabled world of tomorrow.
Hopefully, this book has given you some comfort and confidence in knowing that you are by no means alone—neither in your passion for user experience nor in the constraints that shape your work. You may even have seen that you’re already doing a lot of the best practices and techniques that work well for UX teams of one. Perhaps, you’ve added some new tools to your toolkit as well. But far more than methods and tools, this book has aimed to inspire you to think about what it is that you’re trying to accomplish in your work—what changes you’re trying to effect, what kind of future you’re trying to make possible.
If You Only Do One Thing...
While this book has focused heavily on methods, ultimately, winning the hearts and minds of the non-UX world requires more than method-by-method or project-by-project thinking. It requires you to get clear with yourself on your own master plan. A master plan might sound daunting, but it doesn’t have to be (see Figure 10.1). We’ll close out this book with one final method, one that’s just for you:
• Clear five minutes on your calendar.
• Grab a piece of paper and something to write with.
• Quickly, without thinking too much about it, write down 3–5 things that you want to be true about your work in five years.
FIGURE 10.1
You don’t have to name the job title that you want or the company that you want to work for—although that’s certainly fine if that’s what comes to mind—but think in terms of what qualities you want each day to have. Here’s mine, as an example.
If you feel stuck, here are some questions you can ask yourself:
• What kind of work do I want to be doing?
• What kind of team do I want to work with?
• What kinds of products and experiences do I want to put into the world?
• What do I want my success stories to be?
• Who do I want my allies and friends to be?
• What kind of education do I want to have? How do I want to apply that education in daily life?
• How do I want to work?
• What kind of culture do I want to be a part of and contribute to?
And then, once you’ve got your list, see if there is anything on it that surprises you. Odds are, you may have put down something that you didn’t know mattered to you. But the list never lies. There’s something beautifully simple and effective about giving yourself a quiet space and a few moments of reflec
tion to discover some hard truths.
The funny thing is, once you’ve admitted to yourself that this is what matters to you, it usually doesn’t take five years to achieve it. You pretty much get moving on it right away.
APPENDIX
Guide to the Methods in Part II
The table below lists all the methods that are included in Part II. They are sequenced to suggest a logical order for a UX project from start to finish, although by no means do you have to do them all or follow them in order. Refer to the “Method Focus” column to determine when and why to use a particular method.
#
Method Name
Method Focus
Average Time
Planning and Discovery Methods
1
UX Questionnaire
What do you know about your product and the user experience that it’s intended to provide? What do you need to know?
1–2 hours
2
UX Project Plan
What UX practices will you employ to design a great user experience?
2–3 hours
3
Listening Tour
What are the team’s priorities? How much awareness and support for UX currently exists?
5–8 hours
4
Opportunity Workshop
What areas of the product are most in need of improvement from a UX perspective?
3–4 hours
5
Project Brief
What are the expected outcomes for this user-centered design project?
2–3 hours
6
Strategy Workshop
What is your team’s vision for the ideal user experience? What do you need to focus on to bring that unique experience to life?
4–8 hours
#
Method Name
Method Focus
Average Time
Research Methods
7
Learning Plan
What do you know? What don’t you know? How are you going to learn it?
1–2 hours
8
Guerilla User Research
What concerns are top of mind for users? How do they really behave? How are people using your product today?
About 2 days
9
Proto-Personas
How can you think empathetically about your customers’ needs, goals, and challenges when using your product?
3–6 hours
10
Heuristic Markup
How does a user experience the product from beginning to end?
4–6 hours
11
Comparative Assessment
What are the standards and best practices that customers are likely to expect in a product like yours?
4–8 hours
12
Content Patterns
What content and capabilities do users have access to in your product? How is it structured? What is the overall quality?
4–8 hours
#
Method Name
Method Focus
Average Time
Design Methods
13
Design Brief
At a high level, how would you describe your target design solution? What are the features and personality of the product? Who is it designed for? What activities is it intended to encourage or enable?
2–3 hours
14
Design Principles
What should the experience of using the product feel like to a user?
2–4 hours
15
Sketching
What are some different forms the product design could take?
As much or as little time as you need (as little as 30 minutes helps)
16
Sketchboards
What might the overall system or product look like? What range of ideas is possible at each point in the process?
3–4 hours
17
Task Flows
How will the experience unfold over time?
1–2 hours
18
Wireframes
How will the product look and function in detail?
Hours, days, or weeks, depending on the scope of the system
#
Method Name
Method Focus
Average Time
Testing and Validation Methods
19
Paper and Interactive Prototypes
Does it work and feel as intended?
Varies based on format of prototype
20
Black Hat Session
What areas of the design could be improved?
30–60 minutes
21
Quick-and-Dirty Usability Test
Can people use this product as intended?
As little as 10 or 15 minutes per person
22
Five-Second Test
What impression is created by a specific screen, step, or moment within the product?
5–10 minutes per screen
23
UX Health Check
Can you measure the baseline quality of a user experience and assess changes in quality over time?
1 hour on a recurring basis
#
Method Name
Method Focus
Average Time
Evangelism Methods
24
Bathroom UX
Builds awareness of user-centered design and keeps people interested in your work.
1–2 hours
25
Mini Case Studies
Summarizes your work and turns it into compelling, bitesized stories that you can share with others.
About 2 hours per case study
26
Peer-to-Peer Learning Community
Mobilizes support and knowledge within a community of interested colleagues.
Varies depending on format and role
27
Pyramid Evangelism
Builds relationships and potential opportunities for UX in an organization.
Ongoing
Index
NUMBERS
2 × 2 or Kano model, 115–118
A
A Book Apart publisher, 68
A List Apart magazine, 66
ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), 60
Adaptive Path blog, 66
Adaptive Path UX Intensive classes, 70
aeromedics, 11
AIGA (American Institute for Graphic Arts), 61
AIGA Webinars, 67
alternative close, 31
American Institute for Graphic Arts (AIGA), 61
American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIST), 61
Anderson, Stephen P. (UX model), 22–23
Andon Cord, 11
Anthrodesign, 62
anthropology, 16
Armano, David (UX model), 20–21
artifact from the future technique, 112–113
Asia degree programs, 72
ASIST (American Society for Information Science and Technology), 61
assessment, comparative, 140–143
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 60
Australia degree programs, 72
B
Balsamiq wireframing software, 168
Bathroom UX method, 212–216, 235
Beaird, Jason (The Principles of Beautiful Web Design), 153
Black Hat Session method, 192, 197–201, 235
books, job growth resource, 67–68
Boulton, Mark (Designing for the Web), 153
Boxes and Arrows magazine, 66
brainstorming, 102–103
business analysis, 16
business goal alignment, 73
C
call center transcripts, 125
career growth
business goal alignment, 73
continuing education, 66–73
&n
bsp; going independent, 76
moving on, 74–75
payment rate, 77–78
positioning engagement for success, 78–79
professional communities, 60–65
progress measurement, 74
strategic planning, 74
time management, 79–80
case studies
Mini Case Studies method, 216–218
organizational issues, 50
checklist, 94–95
chronological conversation, 129
classes and courses, 70
cognitive science, 12
Comparative Assessment method, 122, 140–143, 233
complexity index, 79, 94
conferences, 68–69
consent template, 129–130
consultant versus freelancer, 78–79
content evaluation summary, 147
content map, 145
Content Patterns method, 122, 144–147, 233
content strategy, 7
continuing education
books, 67–68
classes and courses, 70
conferences, 68–69
degree programs, 70–72
online resources, 66–67
in your organization, 72–73
Cooper U classes, 70
copywriting, 7, 15
Core77 magazine, 66
Cost-Justifying Usability (Durst), 53
cost objection responses, 53