User experience in B2B - meh

The other week I was discussing the all-too-common difficulty of selling user experience design to executives and bigger companies in general. Startups seem to get the importance of user experience, and certainly companies whose customers are consumers. But why is this so difficult for big companies who are in B2B biz?

Definition of "high-level"

high-level

[hahy-lev-uh l]

adjective, adverb

1. A management speak qualifier that removes the demand to be fact-based, coherent and cosmologically feasible from the following presentation, concept or idea.
2. Warning flag for implementors and other people connected to the real world, such as engineers and customer service personnel.
3. Indication of abstraction that is just a little bit too high
4. A warning sign for imminent constraint-free hand-waving and concepting

Update Feb 6th 2015:

See also: High-level overview.

Management void

Too many companies are in trouble because no one is managing them. In the scope of this blog entry, management means managing work so that it works, and looking after the organization so that it is functional (and I really don’t care to get into the difference between management and leadership, or their various different flavours).

Function of design in new business development

Yet another take on using user-centered design methods in not only software but product and business development in general. The examples are mostly the same as in my previous talks, but the angle is different, and combines Customer Development / Business-Model Generation / Lean Startup as done by Marko Taipale with User-Centered Design.

This talk was in Estonia at Agile Saturday X.

Design up front is back! v2 from Ari Tanninen

Design up front is back!

I gave a fifteen minute talk about using design methods to boost software product development at Tampere Goes Agile 2013. This is probably the best talk I have ever given, I really like the fifteen-minute format. Here are the slides. The core message of the talk is:

Working software is an expensive way of getting user feedback when compared with role-play or design prototypes.

 

Design up front is back! from Ari Tanninen

Everything is interconnected

Everything in life is interconnected. People are connected via social networks, family ties, organizations, and their employers. The economy is a global net that reverbrates with the slightest of changes. We are connected to the same economy as consumers and through corporations as employees. We share the same ecology, and keep using and re-using the same ingredients through the carbon and nitrogen cycles. And after all, we are all star stuff.

But most importantly, everything effects everything sooner or later, and for every action there is a consequence. Kall it karma, or TANSTAAFL, or cause and effect. Regardless, this forms an interesting basis for morality. As human beings everything we do has consequences and we should keep those in mind. Because sooner or later there will be payback for all of our actions to either ourselves, or to someone else. And since everything is interconnected, the consequences of our actions impacting ourselves is just a matter of time. It is easy to miss this though, since feedback loops can be long.

The missing link between business need and software development: product design

I gave a talk about improving IT systems with participatory and user-centered design at the Wildcard 2013 conference in Latvia the other day. Here are the slides and video.