Monthly Archives: November 2011

Initial thoughts on selling Design

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I’m going to call this selling design, but it’s equally applicable to selling any kind of ux, user study, or people-based research. Even when talking to a colleague in marketing research they had exactly the same kinds of issues.

I’m working on gathering resources on selling this particular kind of knowledge and value. In a very real way this is the topic of my PhD research, but it’s done from a UX perspective. I’m writing this because I recently read an article at UX Matters that was all about this. Of course there is also the this book that I’ve just gotten my hands on called Designed for Use.

What are the ways that people sell Design?

Well of course the most traditional ways of calculating value is ROI, when doing revision of existing work this is measurable. E.g. We’ve improved feature x and we attribute y% increase in sales to this, making our €10k usability test have an ROI of z%. Many of us would love to be able to have such a calculation. Unfortunately when you are doing innovation, i.e. bringing something new to market, then there is no way to measure such things. This is true on any kind of formative rather than evaluative project.

I’ve written about how User-Centered Design (UCD) leaves out some people, and Michael alludes to this same fact in his article when he says to “bring your empathy.” As a researcher I put out the call for UCD people to begin the study of those who actually make the decisions whether to fund UCD activities or not, or to what extent the results of UCD are actually used by the relevant parties or not. I think this is vitally important.

The question though is this: What will you do today to sell your design work? What really works? What have been your experiences?

So how do you sell it? Answer in comments!

Some topics I’ll explore in future posts:

  • Opportunities for transformation
  • Including everyone’s “language”
  • Getting others involved early
more coming in the next weeks.

Resist!

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Resist, resist I say! Do not succumb to the temptation to save a few seconds worth of effort by making acronyms.
Resist, resist I say! Think about how silly that new business program or process name will sound in a few months or years.
Resist, resist I say! Avoid jargon as if it would slowly poison you and turn you into a quivering mass of buzzwords.
Resist, resist I say! Adding more process, programs, and controls when what you need is people who are willing to be human and humane to each other united in a common goal that is worthy of them and their time.

RESIST

Image courtesy of Amnesty International

I’ve just managed to read through some of the “management approach” pages on an intranet. There are lots of good ideas and intentions there, and people who have clearly put thought into this. Command & control systems are a relic of the past. Perfecting them is, as Marty Seigel often said to us in our Interaction Design I class, “like polishing plywood.”

In this age of the creative professional, of empowered employees, and certainly in a research or design environment we need fewer processes and management and more people passionately doing what they’re best at and working together.

This is the user experience of an employee and it’s important. This goes to corporate culture and it’s important.

RESIST!

 

 

As usual this post represents my own views and not of the organizations I’m affiliated with. This is not a condemnation of an organization but a call to action by individuals of all organizations to change the way they think about work and their actions in their own work and in their own organizations and groups.