Selling User ExperienceOr When you’re right and everyone else is wrong and a bunch of jerks

Robert Evans - @rbevans

User Experience Edmonton - @UXYEG

https://www.facebook.com/groups/uxyeg/

http://uxedmonton.com/

hi

Sound familiar?“User Experience methodologies are too expensive/time consuming to implement”

“We already have a development process in place.”

“User Experience is already very important to us.”

TO WAR

I DON’T USE COLOR IN MY PRESENTATIONS

SOMETIMES I SWEAR

Please don’t sue meIt will not be profitable for you as I own very little

Your experiences might differ

The Battleground: Internal vs External

InternalFor internal applications

The tougher sell

Can be more difficult to establish worth

ExternalIf User Experience isn’t yet a part of your process that’s… not great

You might already be losing users/time/money

We’ll still help you out

Your Opening Moves

Establish baselinesSet yourself up for victory

Numbers can be your friends

Find your people

Establish Baselines

• Need to establish how your current process works

• You might need it or you might not

• More dramatic when you reveal results

• Will help you focus on most problematic areas

Establish Baselines

• Establish/collect analytics• Google Analytics usually the best/fastest/free-est

• Can work on both internal and external products

• Search statistics

Establish Baselines

• Get your project history• How much design time was allocated?

• How much time did you spend in UAT?

• How many resources are dedicated to support it?

• What were your most spectacular failures?

Establish Baselines

• Usability testing• Not trying to put the cart before the horse

• Quick and easy with your coworkers

• Time people on how long it takes to complete tasks

Establish Baselines

• Run a quick survey• Use Survey Monkey

• Create a survey in 5 minutes

• Pretty much free

• Find your pain points

• Measure sentiment – do people love you or hate you?

Do your researchLearn your stuff

Make learning fun or something!

Do your research

• Learn, learn, learn!

• Books, blogs, presentations by local organizations that just want to give you free knowledge

• At least to the point where you know key terms

• You should at least know what a persona, a wireframe and a usability test are

Marshal your forcesMake exciting new friends and cast off your old useless ones

Marshal your forces

• Find other like minded individuals

• Get them on the same damn page

• You don’t have to do this by yourself

• Project managers, developers, business analysts – potentially all your pawns

• User Experience likes a deep bench

Marshal your forces

• Marketing are not all monsters and can be your friends

• They don’t want to market a shitty product any more than you want to design one

Your Strategies

Appeal to your company’s cultureYour HR rep is now your best friend

Beat them at their own game

That’ll shut people up

Appeal to Culture

• Practically Family• Our corporate culture stresses treating everyone like family

• User Experience stresses the importance of providing positive experiences

• QED User Experience is an extension of Practically Family

• Good luck arguing with that ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Appeal to Culture

• You’re doing this FOR people• Put a human face on projects

• USER Experience

Appeal to Culture

• If your company/organization already “does” User Experience• Call them on it

• Present them with the opportunity to “improve” your User Experience portfolio

Appeal to Culture

• Appeal to vanity

• What you’re doing is• Cool

• Innovative

• Empathetic

• Modern

• WHAT EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING!

Don’t ask permissionThings I suggest because I’m a monster

Don’t be a #$*%

You be you

Don’t ask permission

• Create your own project plans• Be the one who defines these things

• Set your own time

• Much harder to argue when part of the work is done

Don’t ask permission

• Modify your current process• Do a couple of things that you can integrate into your current process

• Repurpose your current activities

• Maybe your weekly status update meetings are sketching workshops

Be a UX powerhouseLet the masses look upon you as a god

Make them dependant on you like drugs

Be a UX Powerhouse

• Know your stuff• This is where your research comes into play

• Be the local User Experience expert

• Really easy to do if no one else knows anything

Be a UX Powerhouse

• You’re the “answer person”• The person with the answers

• Are there lingering problems with an application?

• You’re the person that knows why!

• And if you don’t..

• You’re the person who knows how to figure them out

• You deal in EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE

• You deal in FACTS

• Everyone else uses conjecture, you have ANSWERS

• WE’RE YELLING HERE, GOD DAMMIT

Be a UX Powerhouse

• “Good question, I’ll consult with a colleague”• You don’t have to be the expert yet

• User Experience is a community

• Ask someone else in the industry

Be a UX Powerhouse

• You won’t win every battle• Pick your battles

• Not every project will be a flagship User Experience project

• BUT

• Should be able to say “On this project we improved our”:• Information architecture

• Interaction design

• Visual design

• Navigation

• Etc.

Start SmallGot to start somewhere, why not at the beginning

Making the assumption you’re starting at scratch

Start Small

• 2 weeks• That’s your initial ask in a project

• Pick a task that will have the most impact

• Wireframe

• Build a prototype

• Guerilla usability testing

• Create some personas

• Use your training time (if you have any)

Start Small

• Don’t be afraid to fail• It’s gonna happen

• I failed a BUNCH

• It got better – I got better

• You will learn what your most impactful activities are

Return on InvestmentMehhhhuuughhhhh, fine let’s talk about money

This one can be a trap and I hate it

Don’t introduce this too early (unless you have to)

Time and money make the world go around

Return on Investment

• Time is money

Return on Investment

• Design Time multiplier

• Time spent upfront in design saves your time later

• 1 hour spent working with a proper design saves:• 2 development time

• 2.5 hours in testing

• 2 hours in training

Return on Investment

• Development• Shockingly, developers are more efficient when they know what to build

• Good design means less development time

Return on Investment

• UAT (User Acceptance Testing)• The place where all your design sins come back to haunt you

• Lack of design means you will spend a TON of time in UAT

Return on Investment

• Training• Better designed systems are easier to train on

• Less time spent on training

Return on Investment

• Efficiency• Shave 10 minutes off a call agents day

• 10 min * 5 days a week * 48 weeks a year = 40 hrs/year

• 40 hrs a year * 20 call agents = 33 days

• That’s a month of man hours that you just saved!

Return on Investment

• Maintenance Costs• Shave 10 minutes off a support agents time a day

• 10 min * 5 days a week * 48 weeks a year = 40 hrs/year

• 40 hrs a year * 20 support agents = 33 days

• That’s a month of man hours that you just saved!

Return on Investment

• Sales• If you’re selling a product good design will increase conversions

• This directly leads to money

• Money’s pretty good

If money’s not your thing

• Improvements in analytics• People visiting you site more

• Spending longer on it

• Viewing more pages

If money’s not your thing

• Sentiment (from your survey)• Measuring people’s happiness is its own metric

• Happy people by more, are more efficient and lead longer more productive lives

Return on Investment

• Hypothesize if you have to

• Be careful not to hypothesize someone out of a job…

Return on Investment

• Assess at project completion• If you ran a analytics/survey/usability test earlier run one again

• Compare your befores and afters

• Success comes in the form improvement

Sell your successesBecome everything you hate

Shameless self-promotion

Be like that guy from that movie that I forgot the name of - Hidalgo? The Sandlot? – make sure to Google it before you do your presentation

Make some classy documents

• People love charts

• People love colors

• Talk to your local designer to jazz up some documents

• Create a one-page summary of what things you did

• Like the song says, accentuate the positive

Sell it to your users

• Get them on your side

• You’re doing this for them

• Show them what you did and why you did it

Lunch ‘n Learn or Something

• Prepare a recap of your project

• Present your results

• Tell them what worked and what didn’t

• Going to get more people on your side

i will now entertain your questions