New Technology - Not an early adopter

This post is an addendum to my other regarding Google Wave and the Nook, but focusses on why I am not an early adopter usually, but why I am going to be one for Google Wave and the Barnes and Noble Nook.

I have a hard time getting excited about new technology, I do not consider myself an early adopter, despite my role as a usability professional, and my background in cutting edge technology production.

The process and end product of creating cutting edge technology from scratch seems to be fraught with limitations and guesswork. This applies not only to the technology used in creation, and the product itself, but lack of knowledge around potential marketplace desire for what is being produced. The first few releases are usually incredibly expensive, and they are only slight approximations of what they are intended to become, or to be used for.

Working for 2 GPS (Satnav) producers while GPS went from luxury consumer item (early adopters) to mainstream christmas gifts (and lower price brackets) showed me just how much extra goes into each subsequent release. The first few iterations are deliveries of limited products with only a goal of becoming what they were really designed for (version 8 might be the right one to buy?). I prefer to wait until the people creating these new and wonderful life changing experiences have had time and resources to refine and make the product more sophisticated, based off other people's complaints, before I bash my head against the proverbial brick wall of owning something straight out of someone's imagination, because nothing is ever as good in real life as it was in your imagination right?

Usability for Business Analysts

I thought this had some great visualizations of the interaction between different project teams, and around incorporating all tasks, not just our usability tasks.

This is a link to a great slideshow describing Usability for Business Analysts, its on LinkedIn, so you may need to sign in to linkedIn to see the slideshow.

Click here to see the slideshow

Goals at Work

It's Goals Time at work, and I am having a hard time concentrating on these. For one I am nervous to promise too much, and for two, I want what I do to be useful, valuable, and not just a repeat of the same old same old.

It's tough trying to weigh up the monotony of the day to day, and just wanting to get through it some days, and truly making a difference, even if it means sticking out like a sore thumb. Am I wrong in thinking I am the only one experiencing this internal debate? Some people would advise me to just plough on, and others, would say keep shooting for the stars. I want to listen to the latter, but the flow of the stream as it were is firmly dragging me in the direction of the former. So I stand in the middle of the stream, getting increasingly frazzled, and am distracted.

Of course my personality and 'who I am' will only allow me to shoot for the stars, its the vague fuzziness of that, and translating this into concrete promises that I am about to make to the firm that has me nervous.

Am I overthinking this?

Selling Usability How Hard does it Have to BE?

Selling usability can be really hard to do, in large organizations or small. This is not as some would think because the returns aren't great or proven. Because they are.

When UX is done well, the results are well known, by everyone (I am so tired of hearing 'ipod! ipod!), but it is still a 'mystical' creature even to colleagues of mine. People have heard of it and want to hear more. OR people haven't heard of it at all. These are difficult situations to overcome in an organization but not impossible. Where there is smoke there's fire? These results must be coming from somewhere right? :)

Anyway the point is that people don't seem to know if they should believe it or not, apaprently its still a great risk to take, listening to the end user and working out whats best for them. The exponentially positive returns seem to only serve as reminders to people of its mythic proportions. Too good to be true right?...

The most dangerous thing I have come across are some people that believe they know what UX (User Experience) is really all about. Most of THESE people talk a lot about the look and feel of applications, it seems only to apply to websites, and these people can often use general vague and fuzzy terms to describe what it is I do. Changing their view on it and preventing them from spreading their misknowledge, dismissing UX as simply the 'look and feel', i.e. making just color choices and labeling decisions, is one of the hardest challenges to selling Usability in my organizations that I have come across.

I have worked in 4 organizations for UX and unless we have vocal executive support nothing can get done. I haven't had MUCH luck in selling it in these cases thats true,(except the fact that somehow I keep getting paid) but even when you do have executive support it doesn't always filter down, so the people we have to work with don't call us or dismiss our recommendations as mere opinion (albeit expert). 

Something I have seen work to help dispel these attitudes and myths is exposing people to the right parts of our process, with examples of success, and real experiences like inviting them as silent observers to usability studies (everyone I invite has an 'aha' moment afterwards like "I finally get it! Thats why this is useful!"). Designing with tools like iRise and Axure and other tools that can more easily visualize the design concepts and flow also really shows the value of UX design.

This is a demonstration of the simplicity that can come from redesigning a complex process keeping all the functionality but reducing the complexity, 

Seeing is believing.