Big Day for Usability
Today, the product management group agreed to add usability as an official consideration for all new projects and all projects about to go to beta. There was no real challenge to the idea which makes today a little bitter-sweet. I’d prefer to have to fight a little harder for this.
I suspect that the fight is to come. I now have to inform the product group leaders (in charge of budgets and staffing) to allocate resources in what turns out to be overhead positions. If there’s going to be resistance, this will be the time. However, with the COO and President on side, it will be short lived.
My next challenge is figuring out the best way of training and managing this group. There will only be one, maybe two, usability people per group (to start, anyway) and I do not want them wallowing in a vacuum. I also think it’s best to get usability engineers to facilitate each other’s tests to keep an air of objectivity.