February 28, 2004
Notes from "Value-Centered Design"
Some good ideas in Jess McMullin's talk on Value-Centered Design. Here's some of the main things I made note of:
- Focus shouldn't be just on "the user." The user is important, but shouldn't be the only consideration.
- Currently, the UX community focuses on practice, on deliverables, on methods...
- Consultative sales process -- listen & understand the business issues first, then propose solutions... focus on the quick win
- U.S.E.R -- Understand, Solve, Evaluate, Refine
- Map user goals to product functionality -- let them tell you what they think the goals are, then find out how they came to those ideas/conclusions, and work with them to understand goals better. Some functionality will not map to a goal, some goals will not map to functionality
- If this site/product was a piece of software and you had to design a box for the product, what would you put on the box? If you asked users to design the box, would it be different?
- Manage the portfolio of experiences -- take care of the things that provide benefit for the company like managing a portfolio (of stocks or assets)
- If you only remember three things...
- Skeptics are not the enemy -- if you do a good job, they can become the champions. Be user centered in our evangalism, so use language they understand to convert them.
- You can only build business buy-in by buying in to business -- understand the skeptic's world
- Value-centered design helps to find that balance, the middle ground between business and users
- If you're selling to customers, send UX people on sales calls so that they understand the business of the customer/user
- Talk about the benefit of what you do
- Have people make small agreements to little things early on so that they'll later make big agreements to bigger things
A good talk -- I was a bit dissapointed that this was scheduled at the same time as Victor Lombardi's navigation presentation, but this was very worthwhile and hopefully someone who saw Victor's will post notes here ;-)
Posted by jeff.lash at February 28, 2004 08:12 PM
it was a nice talk with some meaningful points, however i'm concerned about "value" really means in terms of business and user experience. it's become such an overused term, particularly in regards to mission statements (quick query: does anyone write "user experience mission statements"?). that it loses "value" :)
pirsig's "zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance" is my reference for a really deep interpretation of "value"...any thoughts?
Hi Jeff,
Thanks for the kind words. *I* was disappointed that my talk was on at the same time as Victor's and Keith's. And thanks for the notes.
And Uday, value is indeed overused. Though Zen.A.T.A.O.M.Maintenance value is not the kind of value that is easy to sell, at least not alone (though it is probably the most meaningful). Most of my thoughts on value for users revolve around expected utility - what is the perceived benefit by the user, and what is the chance of achieving that benefit. That certainly is simplistic, but it's a starting point.