Abstract

Good design starts before the first pixel has been pushed. Successful designers have learned to manage their organizations and demonstrate the business value of usable design. This presentation will give you proven techniques to simplify internal politics, increase the resources available to you, and deliver your best designs.

Learning objectives

This tutorial will provide practical techniques for creating an effective user-centered organizational culture. This session will teach attendees how to shift corporate mindsets from one in which the benefits of a user-centered development process are seen as intangible and long-term, as an abstract "nice to have", to a mindset in which user-focused customer experience is a vital, short-term process that can create immediate value.

This session will teach attendees how to involve people from various areas of the organization who are invested in the site, get the benefit of their thinking and attain their instant support.

How tutorial will be conducted

Incorporating techniques developed in the field, this full day tutorial will be split evenly between lecture (a step-by-step implementation process), group exercises, and Q&A to address specific attendee issues.

Eight Step Process for Taking Control of Your Site (240 minutes)

This section will provide attendees with eight practical action items for putting the users’ needs and preferences at the top of every department’s agenda. Attendees will be able to go back to their organization and present immediately implemental techniques including:

• Stakeholder Research - Methods for interviewing a broad cross section of stakeholders within the organization in order to understand the needs and assumptions underlying the project at hand.
• Feature Prioritization - An effective, dispassionate method for determining, of all possible features, which ought to be done and which ought never be done, in order to focus discussion on those few things that actually require debate.
• Internal Goal Alignment - Collaborative techniques for identifying points of divergent and convergent thinking, in order to find out where agreement lies.
• Collaborative Design Sessions - An alternative to traditional individual design. A structured and managed way to involve others in the design process.
• Finding and Delivering Quick Wins - Techniques for developing and deploying a small-scale project on your website with big-scale business impact that can then be promoted throughout your organization.
• Creative Effective Deliverables - Better methods for distributing and promoting the deliverables you produce.
• Documenting and Proving Your Success - How to decide which success metrics to track for your Web project, and which interpretation of them will be of most value to you and your team.

Group Exercises (70 – 90 minutes: 10-15 minute exercises per each step)

Attendees will divide into groups of 4-7 and will run through exercises that will support the above steps and equip them to:

• Develop new tools and techniques for non-tradition user-centered initiatives
• Explore techniques for differentiating between the developers' perspectives and the users' at every point
• Formulate a clear definition of the value of user-centered design to their organization

Q&A – Addressing Attendee Needs (balance of time permitted)

One of the most important elements to this presentation is the ability to share the bredth of experience the presenters. Consulting with the consultant is always one of the more valuable sections to this workshop.

Instructor Biography

Deemed one of the Top 25 Most Influential Women on the Web, there is little doubt that in the world of Web design and development, Molly E. Holzschlag is one of the most vibrant and influential people around. With over 25 Web development book titles to her credit, Molly currently serves as Communications Director for the World Organization of Webmasters.

As a steering committee member for the Web Standards Project (WaSP), Molly works along with a group of other dedicated Web developers and designers to promote W3C recommendations. She also teaches Webmaster courses for the University of Arizona and University of Phoenix. She wrote the very popular column, Integrated Design, for Web Techniques Magazine for the last three years of its life, and spent a year as Executive Editor of WebReview.com. Molly has spoken at numerous conferences in the United States and Europe, and has served on the Advisory Committee's for the Web Standards Project, World Organization of Webmasters, CMP Media's WebShow 2000, 2001, among others.