One of the things that I’ve noticed comes up a lot in the world of UX is how to go about “selling UX” . i.e. evangelising and championing the value of user-centered design, within the workplace.
I thought it might be a valuable exercise to collect some tips or strategies that you have come up with in the hope that we can help each other out.
What are your tips for selling UX to your boss or to management?
The most recent tip i’ve learned has been, 'talk to the IT people about using Analytics’
Chances are they have been using it for ages, and know your site by its numbers very well.
Our guys had already set up a lot of the things we wished to measure and saved loads of time for us. P
My tip is to be as practical as possible:
People need to be kind of impressed to change their behaviour. So any opportunity to include users … grab it … record it … make it tangible and visible (Live Sessions/highlight videos)
Afterwards spread the information, present it and try to discuss with all other project stakeholder. Try to communicate to be a problem solver.
One thing you should always have in mind: Don´t think just in UX Expert terms, try what you practice you empathy skills with all project stakeholder. Concentrate on deciders which can provide you project ressources but also promote in the project in general. Concentrate on ressource and money savings beside positive consequences for yousers on caused by applying your methods.
Listen ,analyze and proactively promote lean ux methods before thinking in bigger projects. If you get a chance to grab a bigger project opportunity … don´t think … do it.
Another really important issue: Keep control of your UX project, don´t let a head overrule everything but try to include his concens in your own way … You´re the UX expert
A few ideas off the top of my head:
[LIST]
[][B]Involve stakeholders as user testing participants.[/B] I’ve used this trick loads of times. Yes, it’s important to recruit participants for your test who are actually in the demographic for the product you’re testing, but that doesn’t mean you can’t run a couple of strategic tests involving key people who you need to get on-side. A 30-60 minute guerrilla usability test is cheap and doesn’t take a lot of time to add to your existing schedule of participants who fall into the recruiting parameters you’ve set.
[][B]Be visual.[/B] How are you making your case for doing user research? Is it a Powerpoint slide full of bullet points, or a 30-page document that no-one will read? Consider making a poster, or a video, or a Prezi presentation to communicate to your audience.
[][B]Edit usability testing out-takes strategically.[/B] It’s pretty difficult to not feel empathy for someone who you are watching struggling, horribly, to be able to complete a task on your website or app. While I’m not suggesting you skew findings, one good way to make a strong case would be to run a day of user testing, then use the recordings to create a highlights reel of some of the big issues in action. Your audience only has to watch a few minutes of customers painfully interacting with the product to be convinced that this is an area that needs some effort.
[][B]Point to case studies.[/B] We would love to publish some convincing case studies on uxmastery.com, but sadly they’re quite difficult to come by. The most famous one is probably Jared Spool’s 300 million dollar button. Numbers like that make a pretty compelling case.
[/LIST] I’m sure there are others, but that’ll do for now!