Picture My World

I was just reading Joshua Ledwell’s blog where he wrote:

User experience is an organizational value. Either the organization understands and values UX, or it doesn’t … and it can be very, very difficult to “bubble up” a corporate value. Now, you may still choose to do usability at a company that doesn’t hold the customer experience as a core value.  The important thing is to recognize that going in, and temper your expectations accordingly.

Truer words could not have been written.  The challenge for those caught in companies or organizations like this is to choose your course of action carefully.  Either path may lead to gray hair, so be prepared.

For those of you who decide to fight to make UX a core value, you must take that fight up the corporate ladder.  It’s not enough to woo the engineers and designers, though it helps.  Management has to be on board and supporting you.  All the usual advice applies — start small, communicate clearly, and set excellent examples.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 3rd, 2008 at 4:36 pm and is filed under Usability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.