Sunday 18 March 2012

How organisation goals can impede the user experience

A great (if long and detailed!) piece about how if you don't understand the motivations of all stakeholders in a project, you're unlikely to deliver a great user experience.

The article is focused on product development and is written for usability professionals, but there is a lot to take away here. And much of it resonated with my experiences.

I've found that the most successful and satisfying projects happen when I understand where everyone is coming from, what is motivating them and what for them will constitute success. This tends to be on smaller scale, highly focused projects because there are fewer people involved and often a greater degree of familiarity with stakeholders which leads to greater openness and candidness.

While this article talks about products and software mainly, everything covered applies equally to your website too, so it's worth persevering with the article and reflecting on your own experiences.

I liked this quote:
“The responsibility of leadership is not to come up with all the ideas, but to create an environment in which great ideas can happen.”

I'm lucky enough to work in a team where this happens a lot of the time.

And when going beyond my team, I think my best experiences have come where senior stakeholders haven't so much 'created an environment' but have had enough trust in the do-ers to step back. Once they've expressed what they need as a business, and where their priorities lie, letting the operational people go through the design and delivery process with me unhindered.


Achieving a Great User Experience Starts with An Organization’s Goals - article by Adler Jorge for ux matters

Related to this, something I came across last year, where Microsoft's organisation and conflicting priorities got in the way:
Organisational silos impede user experience - Microsoft in 2003 (blog post from November 2011)

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