CHI 97 Electronic Publications: Panels
Corporate Strategy and Usability Research: A New Partnership
Stephanie Rosenbaum
President
Tec-Ed, Inc.
P.O. Box 1905
Ann Arbor, MI 48106
1-313-995-1010
stephanie@teced.com
Judee Humburg
Usability Engineering Manager
Intuit, Inc.
P.O. Box 7850
MS 2535
Mountain View, CA 94039
1-415-944-3019
judee_humburg@intuit.com
Janice Rohn
Manager, Usability Labs and Services
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
2550 Garcia Avenue, MPK 18-107
Mountain View, CA 94043-1100
1-415-786-6367
janice.rohn@eng.sun.com
Sarah Bloomer
Director, The Hiser Group
P.O. Box 312
Prahan Victoria 3181
Australia
+61-3-9521-3311
sarahb@werple.mira.net.au
John Thomas
Executive Director, HCI
NYNEX
400 Westchester Avenue
White Plains, NY 10604
1-914-644-2143
thomas@nynexst.com
Mary Czerwinski
Manager, Interactive Media Usability
Microsoft Corporation
1 Microsoft Way, RWA/1148
Redmond, WA 98052-6399
1-206-703-4882
marycz@microsoft.com
ABSTRACT
This panel explores approaches to making usability research more strategic within organizations�not just with respect to the product development life cycle, but pervasive throughout the organization. Six panelists discuss different ways in which usability can be strategic, depending on their organizational environments or "profiles."
Keywords
Strategic planning, usability research, corporate strategy, organizational environments, organizational profiles.
© 1997 Copyright on this material is held by the authors.
OVERVIEW OF PANEL TOPIC AND FORMAT
This panel grew from the results of a CHI 96 panel organized by Judee Humburg, Judy Ramey, and Stephanie Rosenbaum. The panelists, most of whom participated in the CHI 96 workshop, will discuss different organizational approaches to making usability engineering and research/design practices more strategic.
Panel Topic
The ways in which usability can be strategic depend on the organizational environment or "profile." In the workshop, we identified a continuum of different organizational environments, and began to characterize different ways in which we could make usability pervasive, depending on the profile of the organization. Some of the issues we'll address include:
- How to gain a seat for usability research at the organization's "high table" of strategic planners
- The effect of different reporting structures within an organization on the pervasiveness of usability research
- Ties between market research and usability research; how marketing can be an ally
- Use of consultants as missionaries for usability research, as well as usability planners and implementors
- Building communication lines within an organization to obtain buy-in for ongoing usability research
- Differences in what "strategic impact of usability" means to us in various organizational profiles
Although the panelists agree upon the importance of usability research, they take different approaches on how to make usability practices more pervasive within organizations. By listening to�and participating in�discussions of different approaches, CHI 97 attendees will be better able to contribute to the strategic impact of usability within their own organizations.
Panel Format
The session will begin with a brief introduction of what "strategic impact" can mean to the professions of usability engineering and HCI in an evolving industry. Each panelist will then give a very short (2-minute) profile of their organization and how usability research currently works in their organizational environment. Then we'll display a list of 8 - 10 issues (expanding and building on the ones listed above) and ask the audience to vote on which four the panelists will address. The panelists will interactively discuss the four selected issues, and then address questions asked by the audience.
SUMMARY OF PANELISTS' POSITIONS
Judee Humburg (Panel Co-organizer)
Rather than focus on functional organization, research practices, and funding models, I'd like to emphasize the critical importance of keeping the long-term vision in mind�customer consciousness. Depending on where your corporation fits on the continuum of organizational maturity, size, and culture, some tactics are more likely to bring you increased influence over feature definitions and UI designs. However, your real life customers' experiences of product or service usability is more likely to be determined by something more elusive than user-centered design: usability as a whole-team responsibility. Thus, HCI experts have many roles to play which facilitate greater, more accurate user understanding for members of a multi-disciplinary team. Usability engineering's strategic impact on a company's business direction or the pervasiveness of its influence is most dependent on the integration of on-going corporate-wide practices for hiring, for market and usability research and for communication. To make usability a whole-team participatory process demands that the customers' views be interwoven into each person's daily creative activity.
Stephanie Rosenbaum (Panel Co-organizer)
As a usability consultancy, Tec-Ed contributes strategically to our client companies in several ways, depending on the organization's profile and needs. At the corporate planning level, we help clients (usually small-to mid-sized organizations) begin usability efforts by providing cost-benefit justifications for investing in usability research, and presenting strategies for building usability into product development cycles. In this role, we help define usability programs, perform "model projects" to encourage skills transfer, and train client staff in usability principles and techniques.
Tec-Ed also helps organizations with ongoing usability programs define and perform projects that, for strategic reasons, will benefit from an external perspective. Such projects include new-technology products, high-visibility services, and redesign of internal MIS systems. Tec-Ed's objectivity and expertise keep different stakeholders in the organization focused on collecting relevant user data.
Janice Rohn
There are a number of organizational issues when creating and positioning an HCI group within a company. Some of these issues include whether the group should be centralized, centralized and matrixed, or decentralized. The funding model is another issue�who pays for the people or the services? Is there full-time headcount whose resource allocation is determined by management, or are projects charged for on a case-by-case basis, as in a chargeback model. Another issue is the relationship of the HCI resources to projects and project teams. Are there dedicated people for particular projects, or do people handle multiple projects at a time and move from team to team? Where in the organization do these people reside? With engineering? Marketing?
These decisions all have ramifications. Within Sun, we have a mixed model. There is a group that is centralized and matrixed, with some additional decentralized HCI resources. We have full-time people funded by their organizations. In addition, I wrote a business plan to open up services to all of Sun so that groups could benefit from usability studies and interface design by contracting with us on a project-by-project basis. By adding the explicit chargeback funding model, some new issues came to light and additional considerations had to be made in order to economically package work for these groups.
Sarah Bloomer
A corporate usability strategy must be aligned with corporate business goals. In Australia, large government and private organizations must now do more with less, as well as reduce software development costs. For usability to help achieve these objectives, the benefits, both cost and otherwise, must be made clear, concrete, and viable within the target culture. A whole business approach is imperative, together with usability activities designed to contribute to a corporate direction.
Sarah Bloomer has 10 years experience in the field of user interface design and usability. After relocating from the USA to Australia in 1990, Sarah co-founded The Hiser Group, now Australia's leading user interface design consultancy. Sarah is also on the faculty of RMIT.
John Thomas
John Thomas is currently an Executive Director at NYNEX Science and Technology responsible for Speech Technology, Platforms, and Applications as well as Human Computer Interaction and Network Testing. He has 23 years experience in HCI research, development, and dealing at a corporate strategic level. The great changes taking place in the telecommunications industry (regulatory, technical, and competitive) make usability even more strategic for NYNEX in order to improve service quality, improve internal productivity, and provide new services to our customers. He is currently focused on helping to improve NYNEX as a Learning Organization through systems thinking and Dialogue.
Mary Czerwinski
Microsoft has incorporated usability into their best practices and has "bought into" the concept of iterative test and design, as well as user-centered design for all products we cover. Currently, our usability group at Microsoft is decentralized, so that each usability group reports to the division whose products they cover. My group reports to the Interactive Media Division, and the usability engineers sit in "pockets" all over campus with their teams.
Since we cover many product and business units, this spatial and organizational spread has resulted in some interesting side effects. On the plus side, we are much more actively involved in the design process, much earlier than ever before (i.e., the concept stage). On the negative side, instead of a spatially proximal usability unit that easily shares and communicates new findings, techniques and methods, we have to form virtual teams to do technology transfer, usually over the web. It's not as easy as knocking on your peer's door nearby, but it seems to be working acceptably. I feel that these two aspects�support from the corporate culture for user-centered design, and our interest in forming virtual groups that transfer technology across usability engineers�have been a successful formula for keeping our group thriving and our research top-notch.
CHI 97 Electronic Publications: Panels
