“We’re also told that we can apply this experience-centric perspective to tackle problems beyond the design of a product or piece of software. But we don’t often see examples of these ideas being put into practice…”

at the beginning of the post are so poignant. Thank you for clearly laying out an example of where many of the methods we’re employing each day can applied to areas outside the web or software environment. In this age where so much technology is being made available to organizations who have very little understanding of its capability (which they’re often reluctant to admit), having someone with experience design background serve as trusted agent seems like an ideal solution.

While system selection, vendor evaluation, workflow modeling have traditionally been the domain of IT consultants I think your article gives designers much to think about regarding what the extent of their contribution can be which in this economy can’t be a bad thing.

Just curious though, how many designers can envision themselves in this sort of role. Also how did you refer to yourself or rather how did the client view and refer to your role throughout this process? As an experience designer? Tech consultant? Something else? Very curious about this, reply when you can.

Good post all around though. Thanks. – Fritz

The term “value” is becoming more interesting to me recently as I have heard over the years statements in UX circles like -

* I am not valued
* They dont value this
* They dont value the results
* My team is not valued
* We dont know what the value proposition is etc

This is certainly a larger topic, but wanted to share and aim to write and think more about it.

@Nick: that user:business:tech trinity has been around for a while, and it makes for a great conceptual tool to talk to with clients and project stakeholders. Those two references are excellent – thanks for sharing them.

@Steve & @Dan: There was certainly some resistance to the approach I was advocating. One of the factors acting in my favour was that I put forward the same idea on a similar project for the company four years ago (different IT platform); at the time they decided against it. That project continues to cause them pain to this day, and it’s ghost was definitely wailing in the room when I presented my idea this time.

In addition, in the interim, I had led – from start to finish – the design & development of a bespoke Web-based business system for them, which was a great success. So the deck was stacked in my favour.

@Lynne: Could you take a photo and send it to me? I’d love to see that!

Thanks again.

How often do we see a company approach the same situation with a vendor, platform or functions first approach without understanding “the need” or “the value” for the people using the product.

We often hear how its hard to get a business to invest in some research up front before jumping into design and build.

Doc – What made sense to YHA Australia when deciding to do user/business research first to help drive both strategy and IT going forward?

rgds,
Dan