Your product development organization has a big, gaping hole in it. (Be prepared to feel defensive as you continue reading.)
One of the most important roles in product development is the role of interaction designer. An interaction designer designs how the users will interact with the product and conceptualize the tasks they perform. He decides whether, for example, the user interface will be command driven, object oriented (clicking on objects then specifying what to do with them), or wizard based. The interaction designer decides the individual steps in the use cases.
Every company has one or more people that play the interaction designer role. Usually, those people have little or no expertise in interaction design. Sadly, they typically don't even realize how unqualified they are.
Let's see who typically plays the role at companies.
One of the most important roles in product development is the role of interaction designer. An interaction designer designs how the users will interact with the product and conceptualize the tasks they perform. He decides whether, for example, the user interface will be command driven, object oriented (clicking on objects then specifying what to do with them), or wizard based. The interaction designer decides the individual steps in the use cases.
Every company has one or more people that play the interaction designer role. Usually, those people have little or no expertise in interaction design. Sadly, they typically don't even realize how unqualified they are.
Let's see who typically plays the role at companies.
- Engineer. An engineer is an expert on building what is designed. Yes, an engineer may know how to design the internal structure of the hardware or software, but such skills don't guarantee any expertise in interaction design.
- SME. A subject matter expert is an expert on the concepts in the domain. What about such expertise entails any knowledge of what it takes to maximize a product's usability? In fact, SMEs often have a skewed perception of usability, as they are expert users, not typical users.
- UI designer. User interface designers know how to lay out a screen. They know the best place to put the buttons, what size font to use, whether to use a drop-down menu or a list, and how to make it all look sharp. But interaction and sequencing is a different matter.
- Product manager. A properly-cast product manager is an expert on the problems, users, and buyers in the market. Understanding users is important, even essential, but it doesn't by itself entail any expertise in designing a product to be usable to them. A product manager frames the usability metrics, but doesn't necessarily know how to achieve them.
It's certainly possible that a person playing one of these roles just happens to possess user interaction design skills. And in a healthy, productive organization, some people are flexible and play multiple roles. But realize that, to the extent people playing these roles are qualified user interaction designers, it is a coincidence.
Comments
There are many good applications that effectively meet the functional requirements necessary to provide value to customers. However, they could be great, and command a stronger market share, if more effort was applied in the area of Usability and Interaction Design.
Why aren't these areas considered a differentiator by more software companies, and funded more regularly? In some companies, this is likely one of those arguably key positions that gets lost between departments.
Interaction design appears to be taking off a bit more in the online consumer space. For example, the iPhone has driven the development of many online "applications" that conform to the existing interaction design of the iPhone and therefore increase the ease of use for consumers.
Poor interaction design and poor end-to-end execution cause customers to delay installations and to put more demand on your support teams and QA staff. Those barely-satisfied customers are not good reference accounts.
The tricky part is that it's not a band-aid solution. You don't get much gain from throwing some interaction design in after the fact (or by hiring a junior person and having them report TO prod management.) Empowered conflict and involvement from the start is key.
That said, a lot of organizations don't have them, and even in those that do, they are frequently overallocated.
For those reasons, product managers are often called upon to be amateur IA's -- either in the rough draft stage or perhaps play the role entirely, for some or all projects. For that reason, it's a good idea to get some background in the basics and perhaps even some formal training.
Some good resources here: IA Links from the University of Minnesota, Duluth and here: The Information Architecture Institute.
I'm not suggesting it's a substitute for having access to a full-time IA, but it's the next best thing.
Moreover, as a product manager if you have a grounding in the basics of IA, you will find you can have better conversations with IAs you work with, just as having a basic grounding in code or marketing can help in working with people in those roles.
That said, the resources on IA are still useful, ID professionals usually have a good grounding in IA, and it's useful for a product manager to have some knowledge of the basics of both IA and ID.
I would encourage you to hire interaction designers to do the work. Check out http://www.ixda.org to engage with the more-than-20K members of the Interaction Design Association. You just missed the IxDA conference in February, but you can go next year to Dublin ;)
Also check out http://www.iainstitute.org and http://www.boxesandarrows.com for information architecture information, resources and ideas. Consider attending the Information Architecture Summit in Denver this month: http://2011.iasummit.org/
IxD and IA are key components of user experience design. UX includes but is not synonymous with user interface design as well.
UX is about researching actual users as people, not as market segments. UX is about discovering user goals and then defining tools that meet those goals...not shoehorning users into meeting business goals.
A hurdle I find is that content/product owners (the person that owns the final deliverable - eg the client) has to be sold on the benefits of something so abstract as how a person uses the product. Part of the challenge is that, unless you work in a research and design company where this is the norm, it has not been the norm to do these studies. The budget owner can see this as an unnecessary expenditure. However, doing the study shows the weak points and strong points of the product and can help to determine if it should be preserved, pivoted, or dropped, and in the end can save much wasted money.
One of the best books that walks the walk while talking the talk is "Don't Make Them Think". Psychology weighs heavily into how and if a person will stick around to use the product.
1. The problems the product solves.
2. The look and feel and UI aesthetics of the product.
3. The internal design and architecture of the product.
Unfortunately, many people don't understand that none of these things are interaction design. Consequently, they aren't likely to hire someone with expertise in it or dedicate the resources to evaluate and improve it.
I have Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think on my bookshelf, but I'm embarrassed to admit I haven't read it. On the other hand, I'm a lowly product manager. I don't pretend I'll ever be an expert on interaction design :-)