Expert Interview: Lisa Welchman

Lisa is one of the planet’s go-to people for web governance, so we’re quite relieved that we snagged her to write our forthcoming book on the very same topic. She’s also available through our experts program for both consulting and teaching a course on web governance; check out her profile and let us know if you’d like us to connect you with Lisa.

RM: Why is website development such a common source of conflict within organizations?

LW: Because usually no one has outlined roles and responsibilities, or emplaced authority and budget, for website development. So managing the enterprise web is a battle of power and budget. Since no one knows who is “supposed” to make decisions about the web, organizations find that they can’t get the simplest of things done online because everyone’s arguing about font colors, technologies, information architecture, you name it.

After a certain amount of time working without an operational blueprint, an enterprise reaches a sort of critical mass of confusion. Managing the enterprise web without a plan or governance is like getting a couple of hundred people together on a sports field and saying, “Let’s play a game.” “What game?” “Just a game. OK. Go!” You’ll have chaos for a while, but eventually there have to be rules or else it’s senseless and non-productive (and maybe not fun). That might be OK if you’re making art or doing an experiment (like the early days of web development), but organizational web sites aren’t art. They are craft. And for most businesses, web sites are no longer an experiment. They serve a business purpose. Web site development has to be supported by an operational model that supports that purpose.

So much of business has shifted towards digital, yet the enterprise (people and processes, budgeting) is still engineered for 1990. By now, most organizations have had a website for fifteen or twenty years. That’s fifteen or twenty years of just making stuff up as you go along—playing a game with no rules. Maybe I’m exaggerating a bit, but not by much. There have been efforts made to gain control through adding a headcount here or there to the “web team” (usually an understaffed, underfunded team with no real authority). But the management response to the web has been largely inadequate.

There are billion dollar, publicly traded, “brand name” businesses that don’t know how many websites or social media accounts they have, or who is managing them. They don’t know how much they spend on the web. Or they can’t do something simple like change the copyright date on all their websites, or find and change the name of the CEO. That’s crazy, and an exposure for the business and the brand. Senior management and executives need to understand that websites aren’t all design and technology “stuff”. They are business tools and they need to be taken seriously.

RM: So what’s the one thing you wish everyone knew about web governance?

LW: That, properly formed, web governance is an enabler, not straitjacket.

RM: Thanks Lisa!

Expert Interview: Susan Weinschenk

You probably already know Susan—”the brain lady”—from her wonderful books, including 100 Things Every Designer Needs To Know About People, and Neuro Web Design: What makes them click? We’re fortunate to have Susan teaching one of our UX workshops—in Minneapolis on November 13—and that she’s available for consulting and teaching via our UX experts program.

RM: What’s one thing that’s surprising about how people do, or don’t, pay attention?

SW: It’s possible to look right at something but not “see” it. Eye tracking is really popular these days, but you have to be very careful how you interpret eye tracking studies. Just because someone looked at something on the screen doesn’t mean they paid attention to it! Vision and attention are not the same thing.

RM: When people are choosing from a list of products or services on a web site, does the order of the items matter?

SW: Yes, order is important. If people are unsure what to do, they tend to pick the first item on the list. But you can change this tendency in various ways. If you have three choices that are similar but priced differently—for example, a silver, gold, and platinum level—people will tend to choose the option that is in the middle of the price range.

RM: Thanks Susan; we’re looking forward to seeing you in Minneapolis next month!

Expert Interview: Caroline Jarrett

We’re thrilled to have Caroline, author of Forms that Work and our forthcoming book Surveys that Work participate in our network of UX experts. Like what she has to say below? Then consider having her work with your organization; check her profile page for information on her consulting and and full-day courses.

RM: What’s a common misconception people have about the design of forms?

CJ: That it’s all about visual design, things like where to put the labels compared to the boxes. Whereas the questions are far more important. It’s amazing how users can survive really terrible visual designs of forms—including horrible mistakes like putting the labels inside the boxes—provided they can understand the questions, find the answers easily, and consider that the questions are appropriate in the context of their goals.

In Luke Wroblewski’s book Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks, I contributed a piece, “People before pixels,” that dives into this in greater detail—and there’s even more in our book Forms that Work: Designing Web Forms For Usability.

RM: What’s one thing you wish everyone knew about survey design?

CJ: You’ve got to test—and preferably, test and test again. The professional survey methodologists are obsessed with testing; they test the topics of the survey on stakeholders, subject matter experts, and data users, as well as on respondents. They test the questions with everybody, and extensively with respondents. They test the heck out of the questionnaire itself (“the instrument”) in usability tests and pilot tests. And they iterate: make changes, test again. And again.

I realise I’m not going to persuade everyone to do that much testing for most surveys, but I’d dearly love to persuade everyone to do a bit of testing. “Write, send, and hope” is a recipe for poor quality data at best, and alienating your users at worst.

RM: Thanks Caroline!

Expert Interview: Aarron Walter

We’re excited to have Aarron, noted author and leader of MailChimp’s UX design team, on board as one of our UX experts. We love his writing, and we’re a more-than-happy MailChimp customer. Below Aarron discusses some of the challenges to managing a UX team, and interaction design in general.

RM: What’s a common misconception people have when it comes to building and managing a user experience team?

AW: The most successful companies and products have a very integrated UX team behind them. As companies grow they splinter into silos of expertise. Developers split into server-side specialties, front-end, mobile, system administration, and various technology specialties within each group. Design splits into specializing on specific areas of a product, marketing, mobile, etc. With each splintering of teams, communication breaks down and the continuity of the user experience can suffer. User experience is, by definition, dedicated to understanding and improving the continuity of a product, which requires peering into each silo, speaking the language of each team, and building bridges to connect them.

A good UX team combines expertise in design research, interaction design, business strategy, visual design, and development. It can be challenging to pull together such breadth and depth of skill, but when you combine that diversity of perspectives you end up fostering respect between the disciplines, which will make designing amazing products much easier.

RM: Speaking of IxD: what’s one thing you wish everyone knew about interaction design?

AW: Many interaction designers feel compelled to create new, novel interaction patterns. But with every new pattern you introduce, you place a burden on users to learn a new way to get something done. Great interaction design uses existing design patterns already familiar to users, and innovates only when necessary. Though it’s a little depressing to interaction designers, our ideas go unnoticed when we are doing our best work. If we remove all stumbling blocks in workflows and anticipate a user’s needs, the things we design become effortless to use.

RM: Thanks Aarron!