Do Business Well

Our leadership roles in experience strategy have spanned the “new economy” boom and the “next economy” bust. In addition to specific constraints and opportunities unique to every organization, market conditions greatly affect the politics of usability. During the boom, many traditional companies and web startups hurried to get in on the action. Being ‘first to market” led to a rush to launch and became a mantra for e-business leaders and their venture capital founders. Working in “Internet Time’ meant that anything that could slow launch was often suspect. In some cases; that made attention to customer experience prone to be chopped, despite a few loud voices about the perils of ignoring customer experience Visionary designers and organizations sought to fully integrate experience strategy into their process. And, to protect this “added” expertise from being sacrificed, some service firms - including Aqua Studio - sometimes omitted customer research and testing from project scope and instead carried it out below the radar. Fast, integrated and flexible approaches were most valued.

During the bust, clients have become very conservative. Getting it right before getting it out there matters more, and clients now use the word usability before we do — some even have processes that service firms must adhere to. But conservatism means smaller budgets, so we still face enormous pressure to do things quickly. We must also negotiate with and persuade clients who come to us with a “usability plan” that a checklist or generic program may not be best suited to their business problem.

In short, we have gone from “hide it” to “expose it” in terms of how “usability” becomes integrated in e-business strategy and product development. Yet challenges remain in educating our organizations and our clients about best practices throughout the business development cycle. The present atmosphere of shrinking budgets and limited resources make the hiring spree of past years seem a distant memory and reinforces the need for flexibility, collaboration and creativity.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
Shifting Tactics from Boom to Bust

• Tactics for nitty-gritty of Negotiation
• Control your cash flow because cash is king
• When You Face Jealous Peers
• When a Colleague Steps on Your Toes
• It takes time so have faith: Six simple steps ( 1&2)
• Financial Awareness, Small Business Budgeting
• I Made My Own Advertising Work part 3
• Expenditure on Advertising: Would I have made more Profit if I had Spent less on Advertising? (1-9)
• A Lateral Move Can Lead Upward
• Selling the Franchise

4 Comments »