The Usability Champion - Principle #1

Educate your colleagues - humbly, please...

As you seek to introduce user-centered design principles into your organization, remember that many people, especially those from traditional "shrink-wrapped" software development shops, are not familiar with the benefits of a more iterative "waterfall" development process. Since a premium has been place on specialization these days, developers, testers, writers and customer support people must increasingly focus on learning the latest systems and tools. This leaves little spare time for people to learn a "sideline" skill set such as usability engineering. So...

When you discuss usability principles with your peers, it is best to assume the role of a helpful mentor, initially presenting information at a fairly basic level, welcoming questions, and using every available opportunity to teach others. Afterall, people must be able to walk before they can run. By using this approach, you will not only teach usability principles more thoroughly (who knows the material better than the teacher, afterall?!), but also start to build allies with which to begin introducing usability techniques into your projects at opportune times.

Patience, as well, is key. Expecting to effect too much change, too soon, can quickly compromises your "change agent capital." For people with an open mind and a continuous learning mindset, education and change is welcomed; for others, however, change is feared and often staunchly resisted. As Kurt Lewin, a prominent behavioral scientist once said, "There is no change without pain." The trick is to be the right person at the right time, ready to apply the right dose of usability balm to the process.

°°°

Mark D. Hall
San Diego, CA, USA
July 23, 2002

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