Abstract

This tutorial will help participants position User Experience as a strategic business process within their company. Discussion, case studies, and exercises will focus on: the visible and hidden benefits that UE programs provide to companies; ways to structure processes for maximum effect; and developing metrics to demonstrate performance and ROI.

Learning Objectives

After completing this tutorial, participants will:

• Develop a conceptual framework for thinking about user experience as a strategic business process rather than a set of techniques and best practices
• Get hands on practice doing cost analyses and developing return on investment models for common user experience methodologies (such as heuristic evaluations, usability tests, paper prototyping, and UI specifications)
• Learn how to identify hidden cost reductions associated with user experience efforts within their own companies and how to communicate those savings more effectively
• Gain hands on experience with techniques to help prioritize work and identify ways of more effectively engaging other teams for maximum impact and visibility
• Practice articulating the rationale for user experience as a must-have competence for every product development initiative using business terminology

Description & Overview of Approach

User Experience (UE) is all too often relegated to a service role within product development organizations, instead of being viewed as a strategic business asset with direct impact on a company’s bottom line. The instructors will use a traditional business skills training approach that combines lecture and structured exercises to demonstrate a complete framework for understanding User Experience as a strategic business process and positioning it as such within your organization.

The three broad topic areas for the tutorial cover the operational, organizational, and strategic aspects that User Experience groups impact within product development companies. Each topic area will be discussed in depth and followed by an exercise session where you will have an opportunity to apply the concepts learned to your own company or organization.

Detailed Schedule of Events and Time Allocation

Introductions and Tutorial Overview (15 minutes)

Instructors will introduce themselves and provide an overview of the tutorial topics to help you develop a conceptual framework for material being covered.

1. Operational Focus

Topic: Achieving Operational Excellence (30 minutes)

In order to achieve operational excellence, your team must focus on providing tangible work outputs, at the right times, throughout the product development process—without negatively impacting development schedules. The instructors will briefly review standard UE processes (e.g., user studies, prototyping, etc.) and discuss strategies for effectively applying these techniques in rapid, medium, and long-term product development cycles. Finally, we will discuss the importance of developing cost-benefit analyses for UE group processes and the specific outputs that should be measured.

Activity: Cost Analysis, Value-Add, and ROI (45 minutes)

Conduct an analysis of your own UE group’s total value-add, costs, and ROI.

2. Organizational Focus

Topic: Developing a Broad Organizational Focus (45 Minutes)

The key to become empowered as a group lies in your collaboration with other organizations and individuals within your company. We will describe ways to widen the operational scope of your group’s contributions to the development process by stepping outside the box of traditional UE activities into areas such as product planning, program management, and quality assurance. We will talk about how UE groups have broken out of their traditional roles to achieve greater success through collaboration.

Activity: Collaborating for Greater Impact and Success (45 minutes)

Analyze your organization for opportunities to find greater success and visibility through collaboration.

3. Strategic Focus

Topic: Integrating UE into Strategic Initiatives (30 minutes)

Too many user experience groups focus so much on day-to-day deliverables that they fail to influence the company at a strategic level. The instructors will describe ways to get more directly involved with supporting strategic corporate initiatives. By getting involved, your group will not only improve its overall visibility, it will become more effective. Current business trends in process improvement will be reviewed from a UE perspective, including examples of how UE skills can be leveraged to support these types of efforts.

4. Putting it all Together—A Recipe for Success

Topic: Preparing for Strategic Rollout (30 minutes)

We will review the key concepts from the previous three sections. How can your group’s core competencies be leveraged more effectively by various organizations within your company to achieve strategic corporate level goals? How can you better communicate your group’s value add? How can you become more visible to executive management, investors, customers, and technology partners? The instructors will present tips and best practices and lead the groups in a focused discussion on these topics.

Activity: Strategic Rollout (60 minutes)

In this final activity, you will create a strategic positioning plan for your own group within your company. Utilizing the outputs from the earlier activity sessions, you will map the specific benefits of your group’s deliverables to other organizations within your company and to higher-level corporate goals. Working in groups of 4 to 6 people, participants will create and refine high-level, 5-minute presentations suitable for presenting to a senior management team.

Pitching Your Vision (45 minutes)

Selected participants will present their 5-minute, senior management pitch to the group. Feedback and critique will be offered so that participants may further hone their plans and presentations.

Wrap Up (15 minutes)

Q & A session followed by course evaluation forms.

Instructors' Biographies

Jon Innes is Director of User Experience at Vitria Technologies, the leading provider of business process integration solutions. Prior to joining Vitria, Jon built and managed an interdisciplinary User Experience team at Siebel Systems. He has designed and evaluated UIs for some of the biggest names in high technology, including Cisco, Oracle, Symantec, and IBM. Jon has a Masters degree in Engineering Psychology from New Mexico State University. He is a member of UPA, HFES, and CHI.

Liam Friedland heads User Experience at Westbridge Technology where he has responsibility for all corporate design and user research initiatives. Prior to joining Westbridge, Liam was a founding manager in Siebel’s User Experience group where he grew and managed an interdisciplinary team. He has over 13 years experience introducing user-centered design initiatives at some of the world’s top software companies including Microsoft, Oracle, and Borland. Liam holds a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Design, and has published several articles and co-authored a book chapter on HCI.