February, 2006 – How to Find Your Executive Usability Champion

Jerome Nadel: Welcome to the latest in the series of webcasts presented by the Usability Group Broadcast Network, coming live from our new studio at our corporate headquarters. I'm Jerome Nadel, Executive Managing Director and Vice-President of Global Technical Process and it's my pleasure to introduce Susan Weinschenk, our Chief of Technical Staff. Hello, Susan.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Hi.

Jerome Nadel: Today's presentation and discussion, How to Find Your Executive Usability Champion, is timely and important. As organizations' appetite for institutionalized usability grows, we find the key theme is, "How do I find an executive usability champion?" Today's presentation will walk through the elements that make up an institutionalized framework and focus primarily on how do we identify the requirements for an executive champion, how do we support them, how do we grow an institutionalized program through effective executive management of the usability program. With that, the presentation is broken up into four components. We will begin with an overview of the need for an executive champion; continue with what are the prerequisites, what should we build in infrastructure in advance of soliciting this executive champion, focus a bit on the characteristics of the champion and close with how do we maintain and support the executive champion to ensure that we can grow our usability initiative. I'd like to note that we have a white paper that you could download from our website that accompanies this presentation and walks through in more detail some of the details that we are discussing. As well, we encourage you to submit any questions over here at the "Submit Question" link as we will be taking them at the end and spending some adequate for questions and answers. So with that, Susan, why don't I hand it over to you?

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: So you know, we talk a lot, as you mentioned, about the executive champion when we give presentations. Those of you who perhaps, have been through some of our webcasts have heard us really talk a lot about this. It comes a lot from Eric Schaffer's book, "The Institutionalization of Usability". It is something, I think, that those of us, who have worked for a while, have noticed how much difference it makes in an organization when there is an executive champion in place. I'd like to give the stories of usability practitioners that I have known in an organization and they often feel that they are doing all this great work, all this usability work on all these projects and yet they feel that they always hit a wall in their work and they are not able to have a bigger influence in the organization. What we have found is that if you get an executive champion in place that really moves it forward. So in fact if you have looked at the chart in Eric's book about making usability routine, you will notice that the executive champion, in part of the chart it is right up at the top, and it is large – it goes all the way across all of the steps that one would take to make usability routine. But, you know, an interesting question then is, what do we mean by an executive champion? Who is this person? So in this talk we are going to go onto more characteristics but first let's try perhaps giving a simple definition of what an executive champion is. So I talk about it as someone who is in a position of authority, in a position of leadership within the organization, someone who is able to influence other people. Just briefly, this would be someone who is very excited about usability and what usability can do for the organization. Someone who can easily and effectively communicate what usability is about both above and below in the organization and someone is not afraid to ask for change.

Jerome Nadel: Absolutely. It's really looking for the value of usability. In fact, that is one of the transitions to the next slide here as we look at what we call the Usability Maturity Model. What this here is that we have five levels – five columns associated with usability maturity. What we have done is highlight the columns associated with the executive champion as well as more transversally, the staffing associated with the executive champion and what we find that at Level 1, we really don't really have the usability infrastructure and note in advance of managed usability, the first step is to identify someone who appreciates the business value - the mandate to address end-user experience and that could be within an organization who is addressing internal software, intranet portal technologies. It could be for a commerce site that is looking to increase their value proposition conversion, increase uptake and cross-sell of product. It could be for a software vendor looking to position their product on the market. So the key themes, and we will be taking different perspectives as we go through, is how do we convince the executive champion that there is a value in end-user experience, that there is a value in building a systemic infrastructure around usability? This chart does an adequate job in describing that up-front, we need to address the strategy and what we will be doing as we go through the presentation is talk about what are some of the prerequisites that might open the eyes of executive management and say, "There is an important issue over here that has a strategic business implication that will either generate more revenue, reduce cost, prove our business model in some way." As we move on within this Usability Maturity Model, we'll look at some other components – building infrastructure, continued staffing, making usability routine, but what we have experienced through time for about 20 years, being practitioners of...

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Some of us are more than 20 years.

Jerome Nadel: Some of us are more than 20 years, yes, is a fact that if usability is done in a piece-meal, tactical way reacting to a problem, it will never have the same impact on the organization in the mind shift, in the cultural change in the organization to deal with effectively and obviously, we are going to be speaking on the ROI and business case associated with being proactive – that requires the support of the executive champion. The attentive part in this webcast is to ask ourselves, how do we accelerate this process whereby we are bringing in executive strategic perspective early on and they become champions promoting the cause of usability and not treating it as a luxury but treating it as a business mandate?

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: So Jerome, you mentioned about prerequisites and I think it's an interesting paradox because on the one hand you are saying your usability effort within the organization won't really expand and take off unless you have an executive champion, on the other hand what I am about to say right now, is that until you have done some usability work, you are going to have a hard time attracting an executive champion to you. So it is, it can be a little tricky and those of you who have been perhaps struggling with this have felt that, you know, "We need this executive champion, maybe we should just go out and get one right away." But typically, what happens is, if we talk about this elusive person – the executive champion, really what I talk to people about is how do you find them, how do you attract them to you? Really what is going to happen is that the executive champion is going to self-select. What is going to happen is that you are going to find a person within the organization, who is willing to take this one, this idea of communicating and influencing the organization thorough the field of usability. So in order to do that, first of all, you are going to have to actually refine at least these four points here what we have found have to do with it, in our experience over the years, you're going to need to have some usability staff in place, some usability work already going on, and the reason is that you have to be obvious, you need to have something to capture the attention of this person. You know, when we talk about an executive champion, they are probably fairly high up in the organization they are high up in the organization right now. So if you're going to get them interested in changing or championing your cause, you know, what is in it for them? So it is going to have to be, you are going to have to show some success. You will have to have some projects, some showcase work, something that the usability group has done. Talking about the usability group, it might be a group of only one or two, you probably don't have a huge usability group and you don't have an executive champion yet, but even that group has to be able to point to work that they have done that has been successful. The executive champion, in deciding to take the group on and grow it, is really going to have to feel that it advances his or her career and they will only feel that if they feel that the group has been successful.

Jerome Nadel: At least that there is value in what they are doing for the organization.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: There is value in what they are doing. They have done something.

Jerome Nadel: Rather altruistically.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: So the other interesting side to that is if you have done everything and if you have provided all this value and you have no value to provide, then you are probably not going to find someone who wants to take it on. So the other thing is, you have to be able to show how much more work there is and typically in the field we are in, it seems as though there is an endless need so probably that won't be hard. It would be good to be thinking ahead and documenting you know, here are the places we have been able to show some value but look at all of the other things that we could do to show value that we have the chance or the ability but we don't have enough influence to do. You really want to capture the attention of a potential executive champion by making them feel like they are going to be your hero. They are going to be able to come in and that there is all this potential that they will be able to realize that value. So one of the things we also tell people is to draft a 6-12 month usability plan. If you are a small usability group, you should have a plan in place of what you plan to accomplish in the next 6-12 months. This again, is to attract that executive champion. Now they might probably change that plan totally when they come onboard and start working with you but they need to feel, again if you're trying to find someone, they need to feel that you have thought through, that you have a vision, that you have some idea of where the usability group is going or where the work is going in the organization.

Jerome Nadel: Absolutely.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: So, you know, I gave a brief definition before of what an executive champion is but let us talk in a little more in detail of this. Sometimes people confuse an executive champion with a usability manager, it's the second bullet that we have on this slide. So we are actually looking for someone who is not a usability expert and if there is a usability expert, they would already have way too much to do. Actually this person who is an executive champion probably has another role that they are already doing and even if they took this on, it wouldn't be the only thing they do. So you can't expect this person to have a lot of usability knowledge and expertise. In fact, you, the group, may have to educate them and bring them along on the details of what a usability group does and what really is user-centered design. You're looking for someone who is high up in the organization. You're looking for someone who is dynamic, who can really evangelize usability, who can talk about it in an exciting way and in a way that is strategic to the business and the objectives of the organization, someone who is really good at networking, working behind the scenes and someone who is especially good at dealing with resistance or change. Change management is a very important part of it because when we talk about making usability routine throughout the organization, we are talking about asking other parts of the organization to change.

Jerome Nadel: Which is in fact, fundamental to user-centric design, we often suggest that user-centric design is informed and validated and one could argue that, "Could decisions be informed and validated as well?" So we have been able to present with data, with objective argument; the value of a direction is going to entice the executive champion, the candidate to say, "I have a stronger argument to make my case."

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Yes. So, we have this idea then of this person we want to attract, right, and we talked about their prerequisites. So how do you go about getting and finding this person? Well, one of the things, one of the analogies I use, is that you are going fishing and you are going to cast a very wide net. In some cases, you may have some ideas about who the executive champion might be or who you would like to attract. Sometimes, with my clients, I find that they don't, they don't know, they say, "I have no idea who to get." So it is a matter of finding as many potential candidates as possible, and contacting them and getting the process going. So, we have here, this is the "Susan and Jerome Debate", right?

Jerome Nadel: Well, a little bit of diverse perspective that we have about this topic.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: So what I'm going to do is first present my ideas on the left of how I think it is good to get an executive champion. Then Jerome has a little bit different viewpoint and he will talk about that as well. So one of the things that I think is very powerful is that you need to have ready, material ready – it is almost as though you want to even before you have arranged any particular conversations or presentations or meetings, you want to be ready. So if you happen to get into an elevator with someone and they said, "Oh, what is this usability thing you are doing?" you want to have that elevator speech ready and you want to have a lot information to back it up. So I like to, I have been going around the country for the last couple of years, talking about returns on investments so I just like to think of it that way. Can you talk about the successful projects or the work that the group has done, can you start talking about that in a way that talks to the business strategy that talks to the organization goals? You know, sometimes in usability, we tend to get all excited, you know about the design of the information architecture or the navigation structure or the results of usability tests and what we have to remember is that the executive champion, you know – that is not the level or the way in which they are going to be thinking. How can you translate that into something that someone at a higher level in the organization would really understand and really appreciate? So I think you have to start talking about your projects in terms of the return on investment it is providing for the organization. So I suggest that you actually get some presentations together and do that power point slide and get your elevator speech ready and then you need to go and start doing your own PR, as I call it. I had plans, I had one client who that in their organization, they had an IT expo every year internally so the IT department would, you know, have a big meeting room and they would show what they were doing in there and people in the organization would just mill around and look. Well the usability group said, "We would like a booth at the IT expo" and they put up a booth and they ran their usability testing videos and you know everyone loves videos, so they were the only people exhibiting in the IT expo with video running and people looking to see what it was and they like that, right? Then they were able to start talking about what the group was doing. That was one thing that they decided to do, the idea of getting down and "let's talk to as many people as possible", they started asking for a few minutes whenever there was a managers' business group meeting- whenever they got together and had a quarterly meeting inside the organization, they would say "Do you think we have a few minutes to share what the usability group has been doing?" Again, the idea was to get out the word of what they were doing with this eye, right, this idea of ROI and what's successful and what's yet to be done and with all the arguments and give that presentation to as many people as possible hoping that in the audience, an executive champion would be there and would come forward eventually. The other thing that you may want to think about is what we call "outside help". So the other thing that I have seen being very powerful- let me tell you one technique that I have used with several clients. We have them, they bring us in and it is sometimes me or others, to give a presentation on ROI or some topic that they would think would be of interest to the people higher up in the organization. Sometimes, they do that, they say, "Let's bring in as many people as possible." A couple of times we have done it where we have seated the room with potential champions, so my client has said, "Okay, I have five people that I think might be the executive champion" and I say, "Get them together and invite a few other people" and then I'm going to come in and we'll choose a topic and during the topic, you know, I'm making this case. In fact, I will often talk about the executive champion and how important a role that is right there in the talk. We have actually had, I've had three instances specifically where clients were coming up and saying that during that meeting someone in that room said that "I want to do this." In fact, I call it "The Ah-Ha! Moment" when you are giving your presentation and I remember seeing this one client and I saw her and she just got this look on her face, you know, and she started scribbling notes and the whole rest of the session, I don't think she was listening to anything else. She was putting together her plan of why she wanted to be the executive champion, you know and what she would do. So that could be a very powerful way as well. Alright - now the Jerome Nadel: perspective.

Jerome Nadel: I think we can recast, we're not actually at opposite roles or opposite corners of the room.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Yes.

Jerome Nadel: I think you are book-ends on the same shelf for what I am advocating. Susan speaks through a proactive or reactive approach, after the fact or before the fact. The ROI argument is to say, "Look at what we've done, look at the inherent business value of that revenue generation, cost reduction etc." The other approach – outside help and the management briefing which is something very often where you talk of ROI is an eye-opener as to say, "Hey if we look at the problem in this structured way, there will be value" and usability framework - institutionalizing usability builds that framework. What I am speaking to is actively, within the sequence of activities of user-centered design thinking like an executive. For example, one of the things that we have implemented over the years is that at the beginning of a re-design project or an assessment engagement, we will include what we call "stakeholder interviews" and in these stakeholder interviews, we don't focus on the user interface, we don't focus on the presentation layer, we focus on business models, strategy, marketing opportunity, wins, issues, costs and with that, we immediately have contact with very high visible – highly influential and highly visible executives and we are able to come back to them with results of this is what we understand as your objectives and as we now critique the interface or we identify opportunities for re-design we will look at them from a strategic perspective and not just as a perspective of best practices.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: That is a little bit different though then. Sometimes as a usability practitioner, you get so involved in what you are doing and you actually have to stop and build that in.

Jerome Nadel: Absolutely. Good design goes beyond puristics. You are not just identifying best practices and what makes something good. It's going beyond the presentation layer itself and in fact, to elaborate on that again, I have a set of slides that follow. The next one really elaborates on the notion of thinking like an executive. The step first is - be existential. So one of the first steps in the process be it agreeing for re-design or some other more tactical initiative of re-design or assessment is challenge "what the organization wants" and as I have already suggested, include stakeholders upfront. We are often brought in by a given group working on a problem and we say, "What are your high-level successful criteria, what are your key-performance indicators?" "We really don't have them so clearly defined." "How can we get them?" Here I realize a perfect opportunity to engage executives in their P&L, their budget area or market perspective, a mandate to think about these types of things.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: So you're really bringing these executives into the project in a way, perhaps that the group hasn't followed earlier.

Jerome Nadel: Absolutely. So the intent is that as part of the user-centric design process, include executives and report back on the benefit of the objective data-driven orientation of how to make decisions of change. So it is not just the interface, it's more of a map-role of the system. We see at the bottom, we speak to address things like business issues, application architecture, business processes and as usability practitioners we are often focusing on the presentation layer and not focusing on the larger problem which can really be much more significant and can have greater impact than just focusing on the presentation layer itself.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Because it is not just designing the presentation layer, it is more of an expanded idea of user experience.

Jerome Nadel: Absolutely and with this now, in this sequence, we've included stakeholders early on we report back what we have heard and what it implies and use language like re-design hypotheses, stressing that we now have to go out and collect end-user data and design some iterations of design based on the data and then validate that based on testing. Now the executives who are involved are implicitly involved in the process, they're more engaged and you can walk them through a rational and more logical decision process.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: I think it might be the first time they were ever involved in a project like that.

Jerome Nadel: Which is one way to get them very excited.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Right. So you find someone.

Jerome Nadel: Absolutely. So building the business case and the ROI argument, presenting on the general value of usability is fantastic but also include executives in the process of re-design. Of course, not asking them what they want, focusing on almost everything but, the presentation layer or user interface itself. With that I thought I would share a couple of examples because I suggest that the deliverables that we give the interim deliverables within the user-centered design sequence are critical mechanisms for including executives to say, "I see the value of what you are doing" and the first here is an example of coming back with the core themes which were extracted out of a set of stakeholder interviews. So what we see here are different perspectives in an organization from Sales, from Marketing, Operational Customer Service and we were able to integrate those in a bloviant sense to say what in fact are the core teams, what are the success criteria and we often use the language of contract for design so we are able to go back not only to core team – the development team or usability team, but to the executive team and say, "For us to get this right in re-design, we should address the objectives that we have collaboratively identified." Moving on to another example and many of you may be involved in portal re-design or usability initiatives about portals and of course, we know that in the portal space we focus much on the roles. Role-definition, I authenticate my role, what permission do I have to access application and the customized orientation of my displays. Well in this engagement over here, we took a provocative perspective coming back, more strategic in saying, "You are a bit backwards in the priority of me versus the organization." I took a bit of a Freudian perspective and said "It's all about me" and this was a shift away from the interface itself suggesting more of "Focus more on what I am doing and integrating an aggregating the things that I need and put the company second" and this very provocative view isn't what you often find from a standard usability approach. It's taking in what we have and staying within the box. This call for more existential attitude is suggesting "Let's go out of the box", really provide some strategic insight that can radically change and improve user experience in usability. Then finally, and we are just sharing examples in different domains, again, early on in an engagement of a rather large global re-design or of knowledge management, focusing on the idea of simply contextualizing search. Here is an organization that had a remarkably sophisticated knowledge management catalog that had various techniques for creating taxonomy and the like but the problem was it was very sophisticated and elegant but in that, it was too complex to use. So we went back and said, "Depending on where I am, provide the things I need." So I am suggesting that as another technique to bring in an executive perspective. Think like one, think about business issues and go away from the presentation layer and what I have found is at the end of the first engagement, we employ or adopt that approach, executives are listening and it is more of peer-to-peer. The review of what usability is, changes from one of "You tested something and we have to define tactical improvements" to "You've helped us think about the problem in another way" - the technique, the methods of user-centered design are objective, rational and logical and I think that changes the view of usability and certainly affects the perception of the executive that might be a candidate for a champion.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: It also affects your mindset I think that as a usability practitioner, those of you who are usability practitioners, again, this would help if you started to do these things in your project, that would help you start to think more like an executive, making it more likely that you are going to start talking about the work in a way that an executive can really understand.

Jerome Nadel: Absolutely and in increasing the value of usability at large. So we move on to how do we support? At this point, we've identified, we have an executive champion in place, and Susan, why don't you carry on and talk about now how do we leverage the relationship that we have created?

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Right I think the focus is now that you have identified a champion, right, you have someone who has, you've talked to your executives and someone has said, you know, "I'd like to work forward" right? The hope is that all of your hard work is done and now you can sit back and the executive champion will do all of the work for you, right?

Jerome Nadel: Not exactly.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: You just come back with usability tests, isn't that what happens? Right, so you are going to need to be prepared and this might in fact be a part of attracting someone and to show that you are prepared, you are going to need to support this person because remember, this is someone, again, we said that may not know a whole lot about usability and is going to need to be educated and brought along about what is a user-centered design process etc. so there is some leg work that you are going to have to do there. You are going to have to provide those presentations, statistics, references, the case studies and of course, if you have been doing some of the projects in a way that you described, Jerome, you'd be so much better prepared for that, right? If you haven't, then taking that executive viewpoint, you may need to go back and do an executive spin on this.

Jerome Nadel: Capture in documents.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Right so it means that as soon as our executive champion comes on board, you actually are going to have more work to do, not less, in addition to your usual usability work. So in this short timeframe that they come onboard there is going to be more that you will have to do. It's worth it though because in the long run, the executive champion will start to take some of that evangelizing load, perhaps, off the group and the influence will be broadened but do be prepared to do some work.

Jerome Nadel: Absolutely.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: The last thing, you know, I find that sometimes I will be working with a group and in fact, the engagement, the consulting engagement I was on to help them find a champion, that was the project we were working on and then we did that and found that champion and I even helped them through the legwork and then we reach an interesting point where the group has a hard time letting go. You know, they got so excited by this idea of being the champions themselves, right, that was what they always had to do.

Jerome Nadel: Yes.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: And now it's time to let go of that and let the executive champion do it and all of a sudden, we have people resisting. You know, what's going to happen when this person comes in and starts championing the group is that they are going to have ideas about how to do it and it's probably different than what's you were doing. That's the whole point – to bring in someone who would take it to a whole new level. You have to be able to let go and let them do their work. You may not always agree with where they want to do it or how they want to take it or what they the group to focus on or how they think it's important and you are going to need to give them a chance. You need to let go and let the executive champion do their work. The other part here is the limelight. So now your usability group may be doing all this work and who is going to get all the kudos? The executive champion – and that's OK. So it's kind of like you are going to have to think of the larger issue, what was your goal all along, was it to have more influence in the organization? So let that happen and don't worry too much about what you have to let go of.

Jerome Nadel: But this will often manifest in different ways, it is not necessarily the executive champion that is telling the story of the user-centric design sequence. It is the executive champion that is getting the spot at that executive level.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: That's right.

Jerome Nadel: So it can happen in different ways.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Absolutely.

Jerome Nadel: The key theme here is objectivity, informed validated design, data-driven design being logical and rational and being in a space where interface design can be subjective and emotional and tying a process that adds objectivity and rationality is the kind of thing the executive should be thinking in that way. So we're providing a set of tools that facilitate important decisions or decision-making, around important topics, that's a benefit for everybody.

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS:

Jerome Nadel: Well, we've come to that time where we have questions and answers and we have received a set of questions already. We will start going through these and we encourage you to submit some more. So let's take the easy ones first.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Did we get some easy ones?

Jerome Nadel: The first one is, this one is in fact very easy, where can I get a copy of this power point presentation? And the answer is, there is an archive on our website, of course, at www.humanfactors.com. It will be up there in about two weeks and we encourage you to download that and I have already suggested that Susan's white paper, which is very well-read, is available also at the website as well.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Now, that's a kind of a power point but they are going to put it up and archive the whole presentation.

Jerome Nadel: Right.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: The slides that have been showing plus you and I talking.

Jerome Nadel: The archive of the cast itself.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Yes, the archive of the cast itself and the white paper, which as you also said, covers the same topic. That was an easy one. Do we have any more easy ones?

Jerome Nadel: We have a more long-winded question here.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: OK

Jerome Nadel: Do you have any suggestions for the executive champion who is excited about usability but is simply stretched too thin and just doesn't have the time to make appropriate case for usability? That's the first part. How much time will the executive champion have to dedicate to our cause, do you feel that an executive champion is a full-time position? And I'll begin with the last question by saying, no, it is not. In fact, again, we suggested that it shouldn't be usability professional. It should be someone who has a business benefit associated with driving usability forward. And we're expecting other questions on "Where does the champion live?" Is it on the IT side or the business and marketing side? We're going to explore that in a bit as well but I'll begin with the last thing, it is absolutely not full-time and how it's presented this is taking this on, perhaps, Susan, you want to share some perspective – is it's going to be presented as you're going to have support from the team, we just need you to open doors and get the right audience. With the data that we can provide, to tell a story that assist decisions.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Yes and it does vary from organization to organization in terms of what the role is like and how much time it takes, it is not a full-time job. Often though, the usability group moves and comes under the umbrella, you know, usually this would be a person who would have a number of different groups beneath him or her and usability group is then moved into that organization. In terms of how much time it takes, I don't know if I could quantify any hours per month. It actually wouldn't need to be a lot. It's just that we need to know that we are talking to the right people.

Jerome Nadel: The relationship between the core group, the expertise and the champion is going to vary as well, to the extent where the champion is saying, "I will open the door, get the presentations ready for me on these given issues."

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Right.

Jerome Nadel: Then it's really part of the standard job but they're just supporting the build-out.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: The usability group itself is probably the one who is going to be doing a lot of the work in preparing the presentations.

Jerome Nadel: Exactly.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: How would you answer the part of the questions where they say that they have someone excited but they're stretched too thin and they don't have the time to make the case? So what would you want to say to them?

Jerome Nadel: I would come back and argue that we are going to provide you with the data and we have some good stories to share that help make important decisions so again, they are categorically two types of scenarios where executive champions might accept this position. One would be for the good of building infrastructure and the other would be, we have some tactical business mandate. So in the latter, I think, there is some obvious benefit of saying, "Focus of this and it will help us make good decisions" as a vendor, in terms of internal applications or knowledge management initiative or public websites. On the infrastructure side, I would suggest it's really an issue of getting the right audience to say, "We need to do this" and then pushing that down to various groups and say, "This needs to be a part of your practice."

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: So, you know, even at a very minimum, if you had someone who would open the doors, provide the opportunities for you as a part of the usability group to come in and speak and perhaps, you know, look over the presentation and make sure you've got the exact executive mind in it. That is a good role for an executive champion and it would not take a lot of time.

Jerome Nadel: And the key here is building that infrastructure, building those models of governance to make sure that the various assigned roles are following that in the organization. The major part of that is upfront in building the toolbox, in building policy and then it's really governing and enforcing that and everything else, over time, should fall from that.

Another question, our usability team is in its early stages, which projects are most effective in grabbing an executive's attention – internal sites, e.g. intranet re-designs or externally facing sites e.g. public websites, consumer product offering? I have to speculate, so I'll let you begin.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: It would be interesting to see if we have the same perspective and of course, you know, I'm going to give the typical usability answer of "it depends" because really, what you're looking at what projects would have a large effect on the organization. So for some organizations, the external site for other organizations, it would be perhaps, the internal work or software application, or the application that keeps the sales force efficient might be what would be considered really important.

Jerome Nadel: That's a difficult question. It's really about high visibility and look at our collaborations on engagements with clients it could be that there is a major edict to take cost out, there's been a merger or acquisition and we're looking at taking operational costs down and that's the primary focus of the shareholder value. So their internal projects about how to simplify self-service, about how to improve intranet efficiency are really parallel. They take priority over high-visibility. If you're a software vendor or an e-commerce merchant, then obviously, it's all about what you're doing on the public side. So focusing on those that have the biggest impact at a business level and trying to monetize that value through ROI and the like but again, don't focus only on the presentation layer, step back and look at the business model, the application architecture etc.

We have another interesting question. Have you seen any companies that have made usability a routine part of their development process before finding an executive champion? And we have some semantics over here, we are talking about routine and what is before and in that case what is an executive champion. I would have argued and again, we'll share perspective here, that our experience has been that the larger the organization, if you don't have some coagulant, some theme that says "we need to do this across how we do our business" which is really the intent of the executive champion, to make that transversal layer of institutionalized usability, it won't work. So perhaps, if you're in a smaller organization where everybody is already a believer, you don't need that organizational power but to the extent where the organization is larger or even multi-national, our experience is there needs to some doctrine around the mandate, an imperative and practical user-centered design approach and if you don't have that, you'll find that you continue to do the same things over and over again and you're not benefiting or leveraging off of the other activities.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Yeah, I would answer by saying no.

Jerome Nadel: That was simpler. Here's another one I know you haven't answered yet. Do you have the specific tools or techniques to present the case of ROI for improving software efficiency? So that's something that I know Susan has been toying with a lot, so maybe you want to share, we have some of these tools internally but whatever you could share perspective on creating those tools.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: You know, probably the best thing, the best way to answer this is to suggest that you go to the website and download the webcast we did on ROI where we talked about tools and techniques. That's probably the quick answer so yes, there are tools and techniques that you can use and again, similar to what Jerome has been talking about, the focus of those is to think about your usability work, your usability projects, everything you did in terms of what is the benefit to the organization, what is the consequence of not dealing with the usability issue? But I really suggest you check out the other webcast and the other white paper in answer to that.

Jerome Nadel: OK, this is very interesting here. How do you get an executive champion who positions herself, that was telling already, as a user advocate, but doesn't appreciate the depth of usability and user experience? So I interpret this to mean somebody is suggesting that they are a user advocate with the applicable experience but don't necessarily have that?

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Let's see, this one if kind of confusing.

Jerome Nadel: I might suggest that we re-ask the question.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: I'm going to answer- we'll decide how we're going to answer it. How's that? And if we don't answer correctly then you can probably try re-wording it. So I'm going to read it out. How do you get an executive champion who positions herself, as a user advocate, but doesn't appreciate the depth of usability and user experience? Let's answer it that way. So we have a usability champion who says she is one but doesn't really get what the group is doing, right? Two things I suppose, I mean one is, that can you educate her, can you bring her up to speed? Can you change her mindset so that she can start to understand what you're trying to do? On the other side, do you really need to, right? Remember, if she's effective...

Jerome Nadel: That's the key.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: As an advocate, it doesn't really matter. She actually, the executive champion will never, I don't think people ever truly appreciate what it is because they don't actually really work.

Jerome Nadel: As we often say in the consulting space, that an educated prospect or client is our best prospect. So the more we have the opportunity to share at a very basic level, the practicality, the data-driven purical approach that should be followed to help make good business decisions, with that they appreciate our value so there could be that approach. But as in Susan's point, if the message is getting across and she is effective, they don't need to necessarily appreciate all of the depth and details of what we do.

What if your management is a barrier between you and finding a champion for example, your management feels they already are doing the champion job effectively or are reluctant to tap higher-ups to get support for usability programs? So, clearly if they feel that they are doing that champion job effectively and they are not, they are not getting the message and I think it comes back to much of what we have shared in the presentation that preceded the Q&A and that's really ensuring that for example, in my perspective, as you do user-centric design initiatives, include executives so they see the way we think. Let them if you will, lie on the couch and share their problems and then you can translate that into actionable, proven recommendations. As Susan was speaking to, build some ROI business cases or give higher-level presentations so you're somewhat going around sharing the value. But I would argue that, in this type of situation, as part of your standard process, include more executive level, more managerial or senior managerial level participants and then come back to them with the value and that should raise some winners.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: You know, what we've got going on here, Jerome, is that they really don't have a champion, right?

Jerome Nadel: That's suggested here as well.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: And so, you have somebody who thinks they're the champion, but they're not actually acting like a champion. Then I think, in essence, you're starting all over and you have to do all the things that you would do, to get a champion and then one of two things may happen. First of all, your champion, or the person who thinks they're a champion, might wake up and take it up and be willing to do the work and if not, you may probably attract someone else who will kind of take over the whole group and do the part of a true champion.

Jerome Nadel: It's interesting because this next question is on a related theme. Apparently, it's come off of what I shared before. What if your executive usability champion is driving the strategy very narrowly, following on his own understanding of usability for example, thinking only in terms of interface, presentation layer, design, testing etc.? And this really comes to methodologically including his peers in the upfront stakeholder interviews or even as part of usability testing where they don't have the opportunity to say "I like this or that" but they're following the structured protocol and seeing the value of how we objectively make decisions in process. So two perspectives, we've shared, one is trying to entice potential executive champions by demonstrating ROI business case, by giving presentations and educating, the other is, simply stated, just to include them in the process and if you can create effective protocol for your stakeholder interviews, demonstrate in your results how you captured what they've said and what it means as your value-add in terms of actionable re-design hypothesis, you're changing their perspective in terms of just moving pixels on a display but really fundamentally critiquing what exists with the structured methodology.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: So again, actually, if we change, what you're saying, Jerome, in a way to re-phrase it is, if the usability practitioner changes the way they do their work, right, by changing what kind of interviews they are doing etc., and including executives, stakeholders, giving presentations, organically will start to change. It's not like you don't have to do anything about this issue, right, if you included those executives the whole thing would start to change on its own.

Jerome Nadel: Exactly. In fact, as a preview of what's to come, we've been discussing because we spend considerable time talking about strategic usability and we've been discussing webcasts and some public speaking around how can we shift from a user-centered design practitioner perspective, classically usability and interaction design to strategic usability and this is part of the theme we are sharing, that that perspective will bring in executive champions and have them think of usability in broader terms of the concerns that were raised here in this question.

Would you recommend combining an MBA with Human Factors training? It sounds like having more business savvy is important for Human Factors professionals. Would you like to take that?

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: I'll start and then you can comment. The kinds of degrees that people have in Human Factors has been changing over the years and I do a lot of, as Chief of Technical Staff, I do a lot of interviewing for people we're going to hire here for our staff at HFI and it's interesting to see the different degrees that people have. Certainly some of the business savvy and business in fact combined with usability is the most powerful combinations for the users we have been talking about. I don't think it's necessary to have an MBA along with it. Actually, one of the best things I think you can do is if you have the ability, if you're not a one-person usability team, if you actually have the ability to have a team is to start is pulling in and having a team with different perspectives and if you can have someone in your usability group that does have a kind of business perspective, not everybody would have to. But it's also very possible to you know, have a Human Factors degree and be an old-timer like me and have a degree in Psychology and learn the business side of it.

Jerome Nadel: That's the thing I think it's really having an appetite for business perspective or business acumen. So if you're thinking that way, you apply the more classical techniques you've learned in Human Factors or Engineering Psychology or more of the classical frameworks that have come in to Human Factors today, you're already looking at things from a broader perspective. And again, much of what we're advocating is to have an effective executive think like one, instead of more P&L, marketing and strategy think of how we do, what we do can benefit the decisions they need to make.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: But do you think that everyone in the usability group would need to do that isn't there a place for a hands-downs person, you know, running the place, you know, and do usability testing in a lab?

Jerome Nadel: Absolutely and we have that type of structure within Human Factors International as well so as long as somebody in the team is looking, the head of the team may be presenting to senior management, is at least acknowledging when they are looking at deliverables or reports that come out or even the thinking and protocol for a study, thinking about this business orientation then you need those who are going to execute the plan. So we're close to time, let's just take another couple of questions here.

Here we are, for those of who have already been, oh, excuse me, for those who already have a usability champion on board and are working at a global organization, what is the most effective method that the champion should apply in order to contribute to increasing visibility of usability practice within the firm? Excuse me, I was rather quick. It was a long read over here. So to re-cap, this organization has a usability champion, they are a multi-national, what should they do to continue increasing visibility of usability in that multi-national firm? Do you want to begin and I'll comment?

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: OK. I would say to keep looking for, to be looking one step ahead. It's almost like you have to have your day-to-day usability practice, you know, and in a firm like this, there's going to be a lot of work going on and things that can be and should be done should be important and strategic and you want to keep that going but then, if you have a usability champion, you can have enough ends tied up in the organization. They can look for what is coming down the line. What is the next piece? What is the area of concern that hasn't even been addressed yet that the usability group might start to think ahead about how to address? That would be what I would suggest.

Jerome Nadel: My team and we work with a lot of global organizations, and one of the things I would suggest is move away from the framework that decisions of usability are held in corporate head quarters and here we start talking about building staffing and infrastructure moving forward. The idea of having practitioners locally based and them in this constituency at a local level to support them in a more global theme of usability and have the usability champion almost mandate and promote that so each of these local sites or facilities would have some presence of usability and see that it's connected through global infrastructure.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: So you're really talking about the next step dealing with the infrastructure of usability inside the organization.

Jerome Nadel: Which sounds like again, you've got that on board and now you're talking about how do we continue that through and everybody being heard and here we look at things like standards and how do we deal with translations and globalization, localization, so have individuals on the ground but clearly from a centralized decentralized perspective, bring it back so it centralizes at the executive champion level.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: These are long questions.

Jerome Nadel: They are long questions.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Almost like essays.

Jerome Nadel: Good, but long questions. They're challenging my reading here. Given aggressive deadlines for development, it seems that functionality always takes precedence over usability. Sounds like a deliberate question. While usability is core for the user experience, how do you balance the two? (First part of the question) Often times there is a decision-making process that needs to take place with both the champion and the users of the system. Clearly it seems like there is a statement speaking to that and as we know within the framework of user-centric design, one of the techniques that we can employ is to determine what level of functionality you really need. So I would suggest in this case be a purical and conduct early testing that prioritizes functionality and mandate that you address usability in the timeline that you have and omit the functionality that is not adding perceived value and that can be done as part of the process as well.

Well, I think we are coming to close our time, we have one last question coming in hot off the press and here you are, can you recommend any generic literature for a potential executive champion to get educated about usability?

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: We have an easy answer to that.

Jerome Nadel: I think we have two answers to that.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Well we have one answer that incorporates the other in.

Jerome Nadel: There you are.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: First of all, the white paper we mentioned before has not too many books, four of our favorite books and I actually want to say about the, I'll just say what those are, first of all, Dr. Eric Schaffer's book on "The Institutionalization of Usability" is clearly on the list. Then we have Randall Files and Debra May Hughes, in the white paper it mentions the 1994 edition but actually there is a new edition of that so you probably want to get the newest version. Steve Krug made me think that it's at a good level, you know, it's deep but talks at a level that everyone can understand even if you're not usability professional and then I always put here on the list Jakob Nielsen's "Usability Engineering" which goes back to 1994.

Jerome Nadel: Classic.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: It is a classic, it is a small book but I think that it's just a good basic description of what usability is and I might want to measure it so those are, there are hundreds of books. You know, I remember when I first went into this field, there were like two. Now there are hundreds but those are our four favorites so you can get that back at your library.

Jerome Nadel: Well, we come to conclusion here. Thank you very much for participating in this webcast, more to come within 2006 most certainly. With that, we suggest or encourage you to download Susan's white paper and look for the archive in about two weeks, it will be up on our website. Thank you very much. Susan, thank you.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk: Thank you.

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