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Advocating User-Centred Design to Your Company?
Bertie asks: "I'm a UI designer at a small company who has recently found himself sidelined on certain projects. It seems that they've been sold without enough consideration given to providing a good user experience, because the deals were done on the cheap. From my point of view, providing a satisfying user experience is not an optional luxury, it should underpin every other aspect of the project. If you were me, and you had a couple of hours to promote the importance of what you do to various people — execs, sales, developers, project managers, and the like — how would you use the time?"
Here is the way I've always looked at UI, and why I've always viewed it as important. The first thing of note is that the User Interface is the way that the consumers access the functionality of the product. If the user is unable to access the functionality, then for all intents and purposes it's not there. Trying to sell (or give away) an application with a poor UI is akin to trying to promote an undocumented library or API. There will be a few hard core people who will invest the time, but the majority of people, if they are unable to see the funcationality they want up front, will simply move on to something else.
Looking at a UI from this perspective, it's obviously important because if a client can't access the functionality they need from your product, then they will simply think that your product is lacking this functionality (I would argue that it IS lacking it, since being able to access some function is part of that function working). Of course, this only goes so far. Following the above argument one could simply put a button for every possible function and let the user sort it out. This is where you get into the second big thing that a UI is good for. Marketing.
I've heard it said that, for any company, half of the advertising budget is wasted- the problem is nobody knows which half. For software, having a good UI is great for marketing. If anyone doubts this, promply smack them upside the face with a print out of all the people switching to OS X, or the feature list for Vista. This is where the eye-candy comes in.
Finally, for an application to really be successful, you want it to become industry standard. To make it to the point where your application is considered industry standard (or just a really good alternative) - or if you are in the business of designing software to order, then for your company to become a common name for C*Os as a development company, then you need to consider efficency of the UI.
What it comes down to is first you have to have a UI that isn't completely braindead, so that people can access the functionality of your application. Next you need to make it pretty so that people will try it, and finally you need to make it an efficent application so that people will continue to use it and buy updates.
A lot of applications are really good at one or two of these, but the ones who master all three really become big players in the software industry. It really applies to all areas of software, and product design in general. You wouldn't ship an MP3 player that required you to open up the machine and analyze the circuts to figgure out if it can play Ogg Vorbis. You don't see any new cars that are shipped from the factory with the weld seams not filed down and the body unpainted, and you don't see many cell phones where you have to go through 12 menues to be able to dial a phone number. Why would you ship software that had analagous flaws?
In the end, I think a lot of people underestimate exactly how much a UI matters, and I think that a sane argument can bring it to the attention of a lot of people. However, if you find that your arguments are going nowhere, then it might be time to start looking for a company where your talents will be valued and put to use.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
Here's one of my favorite posts on the subject. And darn good advice.
Random Musings
Poor UI costs.
There are support calls and e-mails. You'll get a lot for those for simple "features" that are as simple as calling "yourapp.exe -fksd ntfs C:/Windows/YourApp/ dD33145".
It will cost the recieving company money in training, lost productivity, and generally making acquiring and retaining good employees that much more difficult.
It will cost you in maintenence, as a poorly thought out UI is difficult to maintain in the future, and a poorly laid-out feature set is difficult to reverse engineer.
Explain to your company that good UI is not necessarily adding flashy graphics or sound effects, but structuring the application logically in such a way that people with less training (and therefore, cheaper employees) can use it easily. Good UI is the difference between a well thought-out business report and a link to an excel spreadsheet with thousands of pieces of useless, unstructured data. Good UI is really expensive to tack on at the end, but can take as little as two days of planning ahead of time.
Good UI is not flash. Good UI makes employees more productive and easier to support, and isn't as expensive as people might fear it to be.
The ______ Agenda
That's the best justification: a small amount of effort, ONCE, on the interface can minimize the ongoing effort of supporting the product over its entire life cycle.