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?"

Comments

Show Them the Money

[Dunx]

In this situation, saying your company should spend money to do something because it is the Right Thing is not going to work.

Instead, show them how a poorly considered UI is going to cost the company money, eg through more support calls, or through lost sales because the tool is unusable.

If you can't think of ways in which spending money on UI design is going to get money back, then you will not be able to justify the work to your employers.

And if push comes to shove, you can always take your ideas to a competitor.

Make them happy

[AndroidCat]

Give them a command line interface. If they complain, say "Ooooo! Look who wants to be Mister Fancy and Expensive!"