07 Mar 2007 0708H

The biggest challenge in user experience work

in my humble opinion, is overcoming the resistance of corporate stakeholders who don’t read or otherwise ignore our recommendations and unilaterally proclaim their own, often at the final approval moment when all is laid before them.

I do find that they tend to respond to evidence, to data, and to benchmarking, but because they tend to be rather high up on the corporate food chain, we’re either shielded from their vicissitudes or they cannot be brought in sooner to engage in the design process, which would mitigate their undoing of many hours of otherwise solid, evidence-based UX work with, for lack of a better term, tweaking.

This isn’t to say that their input is not appreciated or valued but we could use it sooner than later when it is more appropriate in the design process. So perhaps what we really need to do is to re-adopt some waterfall methods and stage gate the process with the stakeholders and their boss or bosses.

There was a time when I would read how my former colleague from Viant, Richard Anderson, who headed up our Experience Center and now teaches a course on managing user experience teams, would not only proclaim himself to be a user experience practitioner but a change agent, and it is only now that I am beginning to realize the truth behind his words. For instance, take a look at this 2003 post from Mark Hurst of Good Experience. In it he writes,

Changing the organization is the most difficult and the most important work of user experience work.

Because sooner or later we’re going to leave if we’re consultants, and the team entrusted with the work is going to have to take up our place and keep the momentum going. If they don’t take up the slack, we’re just pushing the rock up the hill over and over again. We are only as good as long as our recs take hold.

Sure we talk about skills building an awful lot, but we can always pick up new skills. What we really need to do is to break through the marble ceiling.

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