Monthly Archive for April, 2009

我在上一门叫做“Global Entrepreneurial Marketing”的课。在课上我们需要为一个客户公司设计一个市场推广计划。我带领的小组选择了一个名为Unruled Design的刚刚成立的设计咨询公司。我们的目标是：没有蛀牙 如何向他们潜在的客户推销UX的思维和做事方式？

我在IXDA论坛上针对这个问题发了个thread，想听听大家都怎么说的。里面有一些回复我觉得非常好，特放在这里分享一下。同时也想听听各位懒人的读者的看法。

How do you pitch UCD process (or design thinking)?

Hi all, I am a graduate student at Stanford doing a course project for a design consultancy startup. We are trying to understand how to effectively promote the user centered design process (or the buzzword “design thinking” ) to potentially unaware clients.

During my internship at Google as a user experience researcher, I recall we used different methods to accomplish a similar goal, such as inviting engineers and PMs to the usability lab observation room, designing and promoting posters and brochures about user personas, and having sessions for engineers and users to have conversation face-to-face. Also we think that IDEO gave a nice example by their “deep dive” TV show.

So, we would be interested in hearing more examples, ideas, and stories from you. How do you tell people what you are doing everyday as UX designer/researcher? How do you convince engineers/PMs/stakeholders/clients that the user-centered design is the right way to go? They are very important to us as we are in our “observation and understanding” stage.

Thanks a lot for your time, and we hope to learn from your experience!

Best,

Yusen Dai

回复1：

Hi Kelvin:

Here are a few tips I have applied and learned:

Understand the project/product/users/product team etc - what problems is the product team trying to solve and learn how can you help. Start with their needs first and foremost.

Use terms people understand - if they want you to run a Focus Group (but you think its better to run a Usability Test or something else), call it a Focus Group and educate around it. Don’t spend energy up front trying to convince them that your method is better.

Start small and grow - start with a UX method that provides some real insights and then build around that. Sometimes it may not always be the perfect approach.

Use examples people understand - show products that have benefited from good research or improved design and why people love it. Speak to people’s emotions and make them passionate about why you can help.

Find allies - People in your organization/other product teams who can provide good stories about where user research or design or usability testing or has helped improve a product forward.

Avoid jargon - UCD and other like terms for people outside of our field sound scary and may be another thing they have to learn in addition to their own job. Just as Engineering terms “can” sound scary to us. Its less about convincing them that your way is better, rather showing how the stuff we do may be able to compliment their approach. Find a common language. Lead with what people understand.

Turn insights into actionable design improvements - again less about the focus on the academic and more about what you can do to help improve the product.

Also see -

Selling UX -

http://www.uxmatters.com/mt /archives /2008 /10 /selling -ux.php< /li>

Selling Usability in(to) Organizations -

http://www.slideshare.net/dszuc /selling -usability -in -organizations -presentation< /li>

Selling Usability -

http://www.amazon.com/Selling -Usability -Experience -Infiltration -Tactics /dp /1442103736

rgds, Dan

回复2：

As a general rule the best pitch is one designed for the person you are pitching to. If you’re pitching to a marketer, speak in marketing terms. If you are pitching an engineer, pitch in engineering terms. Extra work is required to do this and you do have to study their turf, but you really have no business telling them how they should do things differently if you don’t know anything about them, their goals, or their problems.

Most UX consultancies wear their pitches on their websites. Go tohttp://www.cooper.com,www.adaptivepath.com, www.uie.com,http://www.nngroup.com/, etc, and you’ll see their pitches plain as day. Frankly if a UX firm can’t express their pitch well on their own website something is wrong, isn’t it? (You can find examples of this btw : )

The biggest mistake I’ve seen UX folks make in pitches is not being specific in what they want. There is often a philosophical war they wish to wage - they want to show a VP/Engineer/Marketer that they are wrong about their view of the world, and that design is more important than they think, which is mostly a waste of time. If you are outnumbered and outgunned, do not fight philosophical battles out in the open because you will lose.

If you drop the philosophy war for awhile you can find easy ways to pitch UX without ever making people defensive. Instead of “UX process lifecycle model” say you have a way to make the development team more efficient, or a way to raise customer satisfaction. All progress on tough turf begins with friendly trojan horses. Use their language and framework and make arguments in terms of their goals. After you have some wins, then talk people up with your philosophy and language - they might actually be open to listening then.

So to be clear, I highly doubt I’d come running in the door with a UCD PROCESS banner trailing behind me. Or ever give a talk about “THE UCD MODEL”. It’s offensive to all the managers and engineers who likely believe they already have a UCD PROCESS in place, however ridiculously bad it is. They don’t know how ignorant they are and likely don’t like feeling ignorant, especially if your UCD Process is going to take away fun parts of their job they’d rather not part with (tip: know who will be threatened by your pitch, and why, before you make it). I wouldn’t say “design thinking” either - you’d be muddying water you need to cross.

Instead I’d look for the most leveraged thing I can do first - e.g. an area where easy moves have big payoffs. And that’s what my first pitch would be about. “How we can improve the Flooby Dooby widget customer satisfaction by 50% in two weeks”. If I did my homework, that would be as large a part of my pitch as I could comfortably make it.

In all cases always have clear, specifc, actionable things you are pitching for. If you want veto power on feature decisions, ask for it. If you want a seat at the table at requirements discussions, say so. Money? Budget? Fine. ask for a reasonable thing, not too big but not too small, then totally kick-ass at it - only after your asskicking performance is acknowledged should you come back to ask for the rest of your shopping list.

If you do kick ass, which if you’ve chosen wisely should be entirely possible, important people will ask you “How did you do this!? It kick-ass!” And then you can smile as you talk about UCD PROCESS diagrams, UX methodoliges, design thinking frameworks, rapid prototyping sessions, and whatever else your heart desires. They’ll eat it up, because they’ve already seen it work on their own turf.

Consulting situations have more wrinkles than the mostly in-house advice I offer above, but the spirt is often the right one in both kinds of pitches.

-Scott

Scott Berkun
www.scottberkun.com

回复3：

I agree with Dan’s points, esp. about using terms that people are familiar with and then educating colleagues around that.

There is a certain amount of theater that is required to get your colleagues to buy into UCD practices. You have to start with the assumption that they also believe that their methods are just as effective as you believe (and obviously know of course!) that UCD is. Also, remember because of these methodological differences, you are asking people to make big changes to the way they work and not everyone likes doing new things that feel unfamiliar.

My strategy has been to slowly and iteratively introduce UCD practices and then generally watch them take hold and prove their value. It requires a lot of patience (esp. when you watch people do and say things to users that you feel are counterproductive), but it also is easier than trying to force people to change their ways all at once.

整个thread的地址：

http://www.ixda.org/discuss.php?post=41562