2008 0411 Ia Summit Presentation

Slide 1: THE USERS THAT USE YOU A Workshop With Karen McGrane and Josh Rubin from Bond Art and Science 11 April 2007 sponsored by

Slide 2: AGENDA

Slide 3: 1. WE PRESENT 2. YOU BREAKOUT 3. WE ALL DISCUSS

Slide 4: WHY ARE YOU HERE?

Slide 5: Your project team is trying to decide between two different options for how to implement a feature. How do you persuade them that your idea is the best solution? 5

Slide 6: You think your services firm should sell more content strategy (or usability testing, or taxonomy) work. How do you influence the organization so that happens? 6

Slide 7: You are a new IA hired into an engineering-driven product firm. How do you gain influence over the developers so your ideas are implemented? 7

Slide 8: You want to change the process your company follows to design products. How do you effect change? 8

Slide 9: WHY ARE WE HERE?

Slide 10: 2008 1995

Slide 11: WHAT’S LEADERSHIP?

Slide 12: Leadership = Status / 12

Slide 13: Leadership = Formal Authority / 13

Slide 14: Leadership = Vision + Influence 14

Slide 15: Leadership can’t be given to you 15

Slide 16: No one can be a leader all the time 16

Slide 17: HOW CAN IAs THINK ABOUT LEADERSHIP?

Slide 18: The user doesn’t adopt the product. Don’t blame the user. It’s the product’s fault. 18

Slide 19: Your colleagues don’t adopt your ideas. Don’t blame your colleagues. It’s your fault. 19

Slide 20: Think of yourself and your ideas as a product on the marketplace. If you’re not successful, you can use familiar user-centered design techniques to improve your product. 20

Slide 21: REDESIGN THE USER EXPERIENCE OF YOU

Slide 22: UX TECHNIQUES APPLIED TO YOU 1. User Research Understand Your Audience 2. Competitive Audit Who’s Competing for Resources? 3. Problem Definition It’s Rarely The One You’re Asked to Solve 4. Usability Analysis Useful, Usable, Desirable? You? 5. Iterative Redesign If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again 22

Slide 23: 1. USER RESEARCH: UNDERSTAND YOUR AUDIENCE

Slide 24: THINK OF ALL THE PEOPLE YOU NEED TO PERSUADE AS “USERS” OF YOUR IDEAS. Who are the people who will use or implement your ideas? What do they need? What are their goals? What is their role? What is their situation? What does it mean for them to be successful at work? How is their success measured? How do they get rewarded? What motivates them? What persuades or influences them? How can you tailor your ideas or your approach so that they fit in with what your users need? 24

Slide 25: DURING YOUR OWN MEETINGS, IMAGINE YOU’RE CONDUCTING ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH Photo from Flickr user LEEDSJMECELAB under a Creative Commons License 25

Slide 26: 2. COMPETITIVE AUDIT: WHO’S COMPETING FOR RESOURCES?

Slide 27: THINK OF OTHER IDEAS AS “COMPETITORS” What other ideas or approaches are out there competing for scarce resources: time, money, or mindshare What are the strengths and weaknesses of these competing ideas? What opportunities and threats do you see? Which competing ideas succeed? Why do some approaches fail? What makes for a successful pitch in selling to this particular audience? Tom Peters, The Brand Called You, Fast Company, http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/10/brandyou.html 27

Slide 28: IDENTIFY YOUR FEATURES AND BENEFITS High You The Chick From Down The Hall Some Developer Dude Low Ease Reliability Speed Likability Stability Cost Quality of use ruthlessly stolen Brandon Schauer of Adaptive Path who claims he stole it from Scott Weisbrod of Critical Mass

Slide 29: 3. PROBLEM DEFINITION: IT’S RARELY THE ONE YOU’RE ASKED TO SOLVE

Slide 30: DEFINE THE RIGHT PROBLEM TO SOLVE Photos from Flickr users ZoofyTheJinx and rodrick.reidsma under a Creative Commons License 30

Slide 31: DEFINE THE RIGHT PROBLEM TO SOLVE Photos from Flickr users ZoofyTheJinx, Templeton Elliot, and rodrick.reidsma under a Creative Commons License 31

Slide 32: 4. USABILITY ANALYSIS: USEFUL, USABLE, DESIRABLE? YOU?

Slide 33: Competent Dreamy Jerk Rockstar competence Incompetent Lovable Fool Jerk likability *via Harvard Business School

Slide 34: INTERFACES TO YOUR USERS What tools and information are available for people to interface with you? Can they find out about you on the internet? Facebook? MySpace? Conference presentations? Articles? Your blog? What are you like in person? How do you participate in internal meetings or give presentations? Do you socialize at lunch or over drinks? How can people get a sense of how credible or trustworthy you are? Do you ever let people down? 34

Slide 35: You’re your own internal start-up and management is your venture capitalist 35

Slide 36: It wasn’t the “I Have a Nightmare” speech 36 From The New York Times “Challenges to Both Left and Right on Global Warming”

Slide 37: 5. ITERATIVE REDESIGN: IF AT FIRST YOU DON’T SUCCEED, TRY, TRY AGAIN

Slide 38: WHY ARE YOU BEING IGNORED? _You don’t have a vision, or you don’t communicate _You pick too many battles and have never won any your passion for your ideas (or you are not talking of them nearly enough about it to the right people) _You have not earned anyone’s respect and you _You talk too much, your signal to noise is have no power, or no one has a reason to trust you considered low, you waste people’s time and never get straight to the point _They’re too busy/stressed/overcommitted to listen _You’re not clear about what you’re trying to say, or _Your comments uncover issues that management doesn’t want to deal with, so the truth of your you sound stupid comments isn’t welcome — maybe you expose _You don’t listen, you always ignore everyone else, someone who is not doing his job you always push your own agenda without ever giving time for someone else’s _You always bring problems and expect other people to solve them, or you don’t distinguish _You do not tailor your delivery for the audience between having ideas and complaining _You are not saying anything they care about, or _You aren’t clear about what your goal is. Do you you aren’t convincing them why they should care. want to be listened to, or do you want the other Maybe you don’t provide enough context for your person to do something different? ideas, or maybe you don’t understand their point of view well enough to convince them from Scott Berkun, “Why are people ignoring you?” 38

Slide 40: WHEN IT’S A BUST When you recognize that your users are motivated by very different values than you are When there is a fundamental lack of respect for you and your ideas When you fundamentally disrespect your boss or other key people you need to persuade When you’ve iterated multiple times and still haven’t been able to successfully effect change 40

Slide 41: BREAKOUT!

Slide 42: WRAP-UP

Slide 43: SUMMARY: CHARACTERISTICS OF SUCCESSFUL LEADERS Vision: Have an idea that will improve your business and other people can get behind Usability: The product called “you” has to meet your users’ needs, goals, and expectations Empathy: Cultivate respect for the people who interact with you and implement your ideas Persuasion: If you expect your users to do something different or adopt a new means of working, and you have to convince them to change 43

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