Daniel Rosenberg

Is ROI an effective approach for persuading decision-makers of the value of user-centered design?

This panel examines the utility and effectiveness of various ways of making the business case for user-centered design (UCD). Most of the discussion in our field has assumed that measuring and demonstrating ROI for usability is the key to this effort. However, experience shows that the most brilliant ROI analysis may not win the day in the real world of business. Our panelists range from people who claim that ROI is an important persuasive tool as long as the communication about ROI is happening within a healthy business relationship, to people who claim that a focus on ROI can actually be destructive. We also explore the idea that there are important business contexts where ROI simply does not fit. Through the presentations by the panelists and through discussion of a business case scenario, we explore some alternatives to ROI in making the business case for user-centered design.

Designing usable systems under real-world constraints: a practitioners forum

Designing the user interface for an interactive computer application is a difficult task and by no means an exact science. Experience has taught many designers that interfaces based exclusively upon intuition, artifacts, or even existing design principles often have poor usability, Fortunately, several empirical methods exist that, when applied, nearly always improve usability. Collecting input from users throughout the design process, rapid prototyping and other iterative design techniques, formal usability testing, and integrated design are now proven methods for assuring good user interfaces. In the years since Gould & Lewis’s “Designing for Usability” paper [2], evidence for the value of these methods has been steadily accumulating. Refinements and extensions of their “key principles” continue to appear at this conference and eksewhere in the CHI Literature. They have made their way into handbooks and textbooks, and are taught in the human factors curncuium.

Introducing the business of UX

This forum is dedicated to maximizing the success of HCI practitioners within the frenetic world of product and service design. It focuses on UX strategy approaches, leadership, management techniques, and above all the challenge of bringing HCI to peer-level status with longstanding business disciplines such as marketing and engineering. ---Daniel Rosenberg, Editor

Leading global UX teams

and cultures. However, none of these issues is unique to UX; they affect all distributed teams. But a lot has changed over the past five years. The progression of digital globalization has advanced with the advent of social media platforms supporting collaboration, asynchronous communication, and content sharing. (SAP StreamWork [1] is one publically available tool for this purpose.) Another thing that has changed: Cloud computing as a software distribution model has removed many of the obstacles associated with software application distribution. Thomas Friedman centered his celebrated book The World Is Flat on this observation. The Internet provides economic leverage for designing locally for a global market, in any domain area, and for almost any use case. Cloud computing, when combined with application stores such as the one provided by Apple, has revolutionized the way software is created and distributed. Applications have shrunk in size and increased in diversity. This is especially true for mobile devices, tablets, and in some cases, the desktop, via productivity apps such as Google Docs. This has radically changed what UX professionals design today, how we validate it, and how In 2006, the April + May issue of interactions was dedicated to the topic of offshoring. At the time, the term “offshoring” referred to moving work to low-cost locations, despite any negative connotations. This description of offshoring no longer accurately reflects how work moves around the world from one location to another. These days, projects are more often staffed based on the availability of creative talent, not just cost. For example, when one of the authors made his first business trip to Bangalore in 1988, the labor exchange rate was 22 engineers in India for one in Silicon Valley. Today the rate is in the range of two to three engineers in India to one locally. Despite this unfavorable pricing trend, the flow of work toward India continues to accelerate, thus illustrating there are factors other than cost that affect globalization. Now, five years later, what is the most effective way to frame the discussion on leading global UX teams? Many of the challenges covered in the April 2006 issue remain problematic today. These include the distribution of roles and responsibilities across organizational and geographic boundaries, as well as the communication and operational problems inherent in working across multiple time zones we deliver the final experience to the consumer. Against this background of rapid change, it is time to revisit the entire context and framework of UX globalization. This includes UX methods, the actual product content we create, as well as the geographic distribution of UX skills. Figure 1 outlines the multiple factors to consider while leading and managing global UX teams. They are product strategy, UX organizational strategy, stakeholder location, and UX skills availability. These factors, combined with the accelerated pace of technological change, make managing global UX teams a continuously challenging endeavor. Typically, the mission of global UX teams falls into one of six categories: • Designing a new product for global consumption; • Localizing an existing product for national consumption; • Designing a totally new product concept for local consumption; • Providing a UI governance function to oversee local developers; • UX team embedded within an IT organization; or • UX consultancy. In addition to these variations in team mission, common factors such as stakeholder (client) location and in te ra c ti o n s N o ve m b e r + D e c e m b e r 2 0 11

Invited panel: managing UX teams: insights from executive leaders

A number of well-known corporations were earlier adopters of creating and building User Experience departments, which has resulted in a small set of executive leaders in User Experience who have decades of corporate User Experience management experience. This session is an interview of some of these executive leaders to learn how the field has changed over the decades, their recommendations for best practices, lessons learned, and their vision for the future. The panel will be of interest to managers, practitioners and those who work closely with these teams, including developers, project managers, market researchers, test managers, and executives.

Managing global UX teams

In this interactive session a panel of experts from industry, consultancy and research labs will discuss emerging issues and unique challenges related to managing global user experience teams, and how these differ from other disciplines such as marketing, sales, engineering etc.

Designing International Enterprise Software

This paper provides a framework to understand the various aspects of creating international enterprise software. These aspects could be used to evaluate and prioritize a software products investment in internationalization. The intended audiences for this paper are user experience designers, product managers and other members of the software development product team, interested in creating world ready enterprise software.

Bridging the CEO credibility gap

Evaluation and usability as a practice area has diversified its approaches, broadened the spectrum of UX issues if addresses, and extended its contribution into deeper levels of product-development decision making. This forum addresses conceptual, methodological, and professional issues that arise in the fields continuing effort to contribute robust information about users to product planning and design. David Slegel and Susan Dray, Editors

Sig: branding the changing enterprise - impact of mergers & acquisitions on user experience organizations

Mergers and acquisitions are becoming increasingly common in the enterprise software world. For example, SAP acquired Business Objects, Oracle acquired PeopleSoft and CA acquired Cassatt in recent times. While this is a business expansion strategy for the acquiring company, it presents a challenge for UX professionals in both the acquiring and acquired companies, who are responsible for branding the look and feel of the newly combined business entity. This SIG examines the design, technical and cultural challenges facing a UX practitioner from the acquiring as well as acquired companys perspectives. We will explore possible best practice solutions that can help other UX professionals facing similar challenges.

24/7 or bust: designing for the challenges of global UCD

The globalization of Oracles development organization, customer base, and product lines has had an ongoing impact on the evolution of the Oracle UI Group (OUI). It has changed not only the product and user requirements to be met via the UCD process but also the nature of that process. This overview describes some of the internal and external challenges inherent to the globalization of enterprise software and how OUI has attempted to address them by creating deep connections with both its user and developer communities.