Value
By Cindy Lu, Ph.D., CHFP
Published - 28 July 2008
You are hired because the business believes you can add value. To fund new projects, organizations or ideas you must demonstrate that you have potential to create value. To stay employed you must continually demonstrate your value.
What value do you create for your company? How do you demonstrate your value? Does your Client, Manager, coworkers and partners consider you as “valuable”?
What does value mean?
From the Merriam Webster Online Dictionary:
1 : a fair return or equivalent in goods, services, or money for something exchanged
2 : the monetary worth of something
3 : relative worth, utility, or importance
4: something (as a principle or quality) intrinsically valuable or desirable
From MSN Encarta:
1: monetary worth: an amount expressed in money or another medium of exchange that is thought to be a fair exchange for something
2: full recovered worth: the adequate or satisfactory return on or recompense for something
3: worth or importance: the worth, importance, or usefulness of something to somebody
Creating business values mean that we have worth, importance and are useful to the business. What should Usability professionals do to continue to increase our worth, importance and usefulness?
Outcomes not Tasks Linked to Value
It is the outcomes not tasks that matter. It is not what usability activities you can do like field research, usability testing, card sorting, information architecture etc. It is about the outcomes you create and whether the client can act upon the outcomes to improve their current business situation.
Here are some example statements -- the first statement is a task, followed by a statement in italics, which represents a possible outcome:
- Conduct usability testing. Determine the challenges users have with our product.
- Conduct card sorting. Determine how users categorize the information.
- Analyze and define product requirements. Determine the product’s key features that have a potential impact on users’ productivity, efficiency or satisfaction.
When you tell people that you do user research, usability testing or design, you only communicate the tasks you perform but not the outcomes you can create, the problems you solve or impact you generate for the business. Focusing on the outcome statements will have a different effect. It can help people understand the results you will bring to the business.
The outcomes you create, either via delivering a design solution, identifying key challenges that users have with your products, helping the development team with a design decision will contribute to improved products or services which in turn will improve the current position of the business.
For example, when you deliver a design solution to your development team, you enable the product development to move forward with implementation. When you have identified the challenges through field studies or usability testing and shared recommendations with the team, you can help the team focus on these opportunities for solutions.
Identify Outcomes
For every task you are assigned to, you should identify outcomes first. Here are some examples:
- Help write a winning proposal
You are asked to write a section about usability for a proposal that your business development team is writing. The outcome should be a convincing description of your capability and experience of understanding target users and ensuring the solutions meet the users’ needs. The description should be appropriate to the target audience and align with your customer’s vision.
- Help the team deliver a product
You are a part of a product development team and your role is to design the product’s user interface. The outcome should be the design solution that meets the criteria your team agreed, verified with users, and to be implemented within your team’s timeline.
- Help Define product requirements
Sometimes, you receive vague problem statements or product requirements that you are asked to use to deliver a design solution. You do not have direct access to users. Focus on what you know to come up with design solutions that can help the team further clarify product requirements. At this time, define areas that need user’s input to test assumptions.
- Turn the field studies results into product requirements
You have the opportunity to conduct field studies. Share results with the team and convert the findings into product requirements enabling the team to act upon the outcome.
Fighting with the development team to show that your design solution is the right and only approach may not create any value. Complaining or criticizing the product vision, requirements definition or process will not make you more valuable. Delivering something that is useful for the team to move forward makes you valuable.
Prove Your Value
The best proof of your value is through your customer. If you have helped your client, business or your manager improve their current condition and deliver a solution, you are proven to be valuable.
A few months ago, I was called for a business trip to understand the usability challenges a Beta customer was experiencing one of our new products. I traveled with a Business Development Managing Director, a Product Director and a Product Manager. We listened to the customer’s complaints, reviewed the test report and watched the problems they experienced. We proposed possible solutions and a future plan. I focused on the areas of how users use the product in their work context and the interaction flows. At the end of the day, we convinced the company that we had the expertise to resolve these issues. We saved a customer for our company.
Last year, I led a design effort for a new product that was based on an existing product. I conducted very limited user research -- a phone interview with one user and a design walkthrough with two potential users over the phone. The product was launched successfully. Our effort was perceived as success although it did not meet the perfect user-centered-design standard. The product team regularly consults with me about new product features.
I am leading a complex new product development and we had an opportunity to conduct user research. We created personas, conceptual designs and walked through the designs with users. However, we are perceived as too slow to design the product so currently we are changing the way we create solutions and focusing on helping the team move forward.
Summary
We want to justify our position, a new design idea or the usability method. We want to get hired or stay employed. We want to be perceived as valuable to clients, business, Managers and our peers. Focusing on outcomes instead of tasks and to demonstrate the impact of the outcomes will enable us to be more valuable.
You may argue that we are hired to provide values to end user instead of the organization that hires us. However, you and the organization are one team that serves the customers and end users. Implementing a complete user-centered design process is not an overnight process. If you can demonstrate your value through employing smart usability methods and resources, you will be able to help the organization understand and appreciate the approaches.
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