The User Experience Team of One
Highlights
If You Only Do One Thing…
If you feel stuck, here are some questions you can ask yourself:
• What kind of work do I want to be doing?
• What kind of team do I want to work with?
• What kinds of products and experiences do I want to put into the world?
• What do I want my success stories to be?
• Who do I want my allies and friends to be?
• What kind of education do I want to have? How do I want to apply that education in daily life?
• How do I want to work?
• What kind of culture do I want to be a part of and contribute to?
And then, once you’ve got your list, see if there is anything on it that surprises you. Odds are, you may have put down something that you didn’t know mattered to you. But the list never lies. There’s something beautifully simple and effective about giving yourself a quiet space and a few moments of reflection to discover some hard truths.
If You Only Do One Thing…
get clear with yourself on your own master plan. A master plan might sound daunting, but it doesn’t have to be (see Figure 10.1). We’ll close out this book with one final method, one that’s just for you:
• Clear five minutes on your calendar.
• Grab a piece of paper and something to write with.
• Quickly, without thinking too much about it, write down 3–5 things that you want to be true about your work in five years.
Responses to Common Objections
Talking about UX often leads to questions, and in some cases objections. But any seasoned salesperson will tell you that objections are an opportunity, not a threat. Think of an objection as an invitation to a more direct and honest conversation, where you can really probe about what’s driving someone else’s point of view.
Responses to Common Objections
the market research firm Forrester developed an ROI model to measure the benefit of personas to the companies that undertake them. They discovered that a redesign effort with personas can provide a return of up to four times more than a redesign without personas. (From the Forrester Report “The ROI of Personas.”)
Responses to Common Objections
CEO Janice Durst explains, “It costs much less to code the interface in a customer acceptable way the first time than it does to introduce a poor UI in the field and then rework that UI in version two. In addition, a poor UI will increase support costs.”