IA Summit 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...




1. 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.


2. You can only build business buy-in by buying in to business -- understand the skeptic's world


3. 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 ;-)