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| Idea Market Afterthoughts 2004 |
What are the roles on a usability / user-centered design team?
Activator: Whitney Quesenbery
I started with a set of initial questions, thinking we would talk about how our teams are organized:
- What are the different roles that your team has identified?
- What are the skills needed for those roles?
- How many different people fill those roles?
- Are roles assigned differently depending on the project size?
We quickly found that these questions were did not fit the experience of the people who stopped to talk. Most people were in companies that had not created formal usability teams, so it was very difficult to answer these questions as a group. Instead, we gathered stories about the team structure (and the gaps in it) of some of the people. The goal was to try to create comparable profiles that would let us compare experience.
As we looked across all of the profiles, we saw two common threads:
- Most of the people were a lone "jack of all trades" covering design, usability and testing … even on very large teams or in large companies.
- The two most consistent needs were for:
- Graphics and information design skills
- Support for the work in the form of an official voice, "enforcement" or more active management
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Profile: A consumer electronics manufacturer |
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Biggest Problems |
User documentation is brought in very late. |
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Changes Needed |
Bring user documentation in earlier |
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Profile: A systems engineering group |
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Team Structure |
One person handles UI design, evaluation and requirements analysis, and also does some simple graphics for things like buttons. She creates a design requirements document which is turned over to the software developers. |
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Biggest Problems |
The developers interpret the style guide incorrectly |
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Changes Needed |
More interaction with the software development team |
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Profile: A government agency (research psychology) |
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Team Structure |
A usability and accessibility group does methods research for internal clients. One of their current projects is redesigning an intranet, working with managers (both directors and IT managers), developers, usability. Content writers are not part of the team, but work in the background. Design is done by contractors. They did work on how to organize terms, screen design (with only management input) and are now doing user testing and card sorting. |
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Changes Needed |
The team needs more technical skills |
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Profile: A consulting company |
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Team Structure |
Working under a technical manager who also manages the developers, one person serves as the designer, tester and "everything that’s not code." She has a background in cognitive psychology. |
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Biggest Problems |
They did demos, not tests. |
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Changes Needed |
She was too busy to enforce design decisions |
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Profile: A government agency |
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Team Structure |
The web team includes two programmers, a webmaster and one person who handles content, IA, UI design, daily maintenance and complaints (plus project management). She does not do graphics. |
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Changes Needed |
Support out in the organization |
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Profile: A product development group |
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Team Structure |
Each of three product development groups includes Programmers, QA, Design and Docs. Design handles market research, product direction, design specs and usabilty testing. Docs handles user guides, inline help, usability tests The Docs and Design groups trained together in usability. |
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Profile: A university web developer |
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Team Structure |
This is a one-person team. She handles design, development, testing and writing. She brings in "outside" experts for content users (students and faculty). |
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Changes Needed |
She needs a graphic designer with information design knowledge to work on the site. |
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Profile: An industrial automation company |
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Team Structure |
A writing group was downsized, and the remaining technical writers farmed out to development managers. The writers sit in on product design meetings. There is now one usability person (down from a whole group) who reviews specs. |
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Biggest Problems |
Usability advice is not taken |
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Changes Needed |
Go back to having a technical communication manager. |
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