Comments on: Discussion: How do you communicate a UX vision?

By: Daniel Szuc

Daniel Szuc — Sun, 09 May 2010 00:43:10 +0000

Hi Joe, what is a “UR person”?

Thanks,
Daniel

By: Joe Fletcher

Joe Fletcher — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 05:54:34 +0000

There a few ways I’ve learned to deal with this. First is to not let everyone go away and forget. There are the things I always see at conferences…put up posters, make a slogan… I find these ways pretty useless if they aren’t accompanied by other efforts. Daniel, you’re a UR person, no? I’m pretty surprised I didn’t see scenarios up there. Out of all your brainstorming should come design goals, scenarios, feature lists, etc. Then it’s *not a “go back to your team and forget”, but what you’ve created helps inform the direction of the product. As you design and build the product… when you do usability testing, use your core scenarios to test against. Use the design goals to [user] test against. When designing, use those same things to check and recheck if your designs follow them. QA can use then to build out test cases. When you design, also bring in other team members to help brainstorm. The more people feel engaged and bought in, the more they’ll work with you towards the same goals. My 2 cents in 2 minutes there

By: Christian Beck

Christian Beck — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 16:41:01 +0000

I’m in the happy position of dealing with this myself right now. Happy because in past projects, UX vision didn’t carry much weight. Now I’m on a new product with stakeholders who really support UX and want to make it a priority.

This may take your question in a different direction because it’s more practical and less sexy. But what I’ve found is that ux professionals have to be cognizant of the different ways each functional area views the same problem. Everyone will get excited during a presentation or looking at great-looking diagrams. But what will keep other areas like QA or dev focused on the UX vision is something measurable against. The unsexy part of the vision is deconstructing it into prioritized goals or even ux requirements.

It may be different for everyone but I think the important thing to remember is that everyone does not have to ‘get’ the vision like you will. If QA gets the vision through use cases translated to test cases, or dev gets the vision through goals translated to functional requirements, great. Our job is to communicate the vision in a format that suits their work. The process can seem a little mechanic, but in the end, I think when you come back up to a high level, you’ll find more success at achieving the grander vision.

By: Daniel Szuc

Daniel Szuc — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 07:11:51 +0000

Hi Matto – how do you get people, independent of role in the business, to keep warm around a “UX vision” and to better understand how they can help deliver on it? There is much more, but would like to see how the discussion evolves.

Thanks,
Dan

By: Nick

Nick — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 20:26:08 +0000

Good question Daniel.
A few times I’ve used a ‘rich picture’ to make sure the vision endures. I usually have the ‘user’ as a central element or character in a diagram which tells the story of the experience you wish the user to have.
This works really well with in a ‘timeline’ format showing the changing shape of interactions and growing levels of engagement etc. along the customer journey.
I find this type of thing works well in a less formal cartoon style rather than a formal ‘boxes and arrows’ diagram.
And make sure you print her out LARGE and get it up on the wall.

By: Matto

Matto — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 11:54:22 +0000

What is the point you are making? I am feeling all ‘so what?!’ right now…