WTF is a UXD?
Question: I’ve heard a lot about User Experience Design (UXD) recently, so in 3 words define the role of a User Experience Designer
Jason: Sure … just after some initial waffle first.
I still suffer under other people’s misapprehension that I’m the IT guy who’s come to sort out their technical solution. Of course, if you happen to be one of the IT guys or gals who really HAVE come to sort out the technical solution, I’m the woolly-brained consultant who doesn’t know how to deliver and implement a technical solution.
So, apart from sitting on my sofa and churning out ranty blog posts, what actually do I do as a UXD – a User Experience Designer?
I’m going to answer this in two ways – firstly as a analogy, and then in the true spirit of online social sharing, I’m going to send you to someone else’s blog – rather than just rip it off and try and claim the glory, before being inevitably found out, and my reputation, what little there is left, dragged through the digital streets and be pelted with virtual fruit for my plagiarism.
Building a digital presence (that’s websites, mobile sites and intranets, to thee and me) is like building a house and the UXD is the architect. Graphic designers may be the interior designers and the IT crowd can be thought of as the skilled builders, plumbers, electricians.
I, the UXD/architect am responsible for understanding the needs of the business and its users / future home owners, creating concepts and designs based on these and translating those designs into plans that the IT crowd/builders can comment on and ultimately make happen, with the graphic designers / interior designers creating beautiful visual metaphors … and other lovely stuff.
The real skill of the UXD comes in finding creative and valuable answers to questions and being able to communicate these concepts and plans to the other ‘construction’ parties, and being able to articulate the benefits of their ideas to influence their stakeholders.
So … it’s analyst, inventor and promoter (hmmm … must use this again), but what are the actual outputs?
For this, I hand you over to author and UXD extraordinaire, Peter Morville, and his excellent article User Experience Deliverables.
Ba-dee-ba-dee-ba-dee-ba-dee-ba-dee-ba-dee-ba-dee-ba … That’s all folks.
The Long Dog (with thanks to Mel Blanc)
Tags: career, ixd, User-Centred Design, UXD, web design
We will be 110 yrs old (not us two, the industry!) and still be using the Architect/Designer/Builder metaphor. It just works and people understand it. You’ve done a great job of explaining it though – sweet.
Great post Jason. I think the ‘cost per employee’ number you use is quite conservative too – I’m guessing its the salary cost rather than the cost to the organization including pensions, training, offices etc.
How did you calculate the saving due to inefficiency though? I couldn’t see where the number would come from.
Thanks Adam. You’re right – the ‘cost’ per employee is salary (and a couple of years old, now), so there are extra cost implicactions here. There’s also extra cost in the wasted time it takes for the ‘user’ to talk to their colleague(s), who in turn aren’t getting on with whatever they do, to resolve the issue and the duplication of work blah blah and so on, so it really mounts up.
The effectiveness / efficiency is based on can a defined task be completed / if it can – how may attempts are needed to compelte the task, respectively. This answer your question?
Ah … unless you mean the whole thing, in which case (and this is the first time I’ve written it out in text form)…
Total time employees spent onthe intrant X average salary cost/year = total (salary) cost of employees using the intranet
Then work what’s productive / wasted time using the effectiveness / efficient numbers.
Better?
And I presume you’re referring to the post “Save yourself £8m/$13m and 73 years – intranet case study“?