Why can't we convince the top brass to invest in the user experience

Article Description: Why I (and you) can't convince the top brass to invest in the user experience.

Original Author: Jared Spool
Original address: Http://uie.com/brainsparks

Every few weeks, I don't know where to start a phone call or email, please cast my magic. The people who made the request wanted me to do the same thing: standing in front of the conference room full of their company's top brass, taking out a set of PPT to light their enthusiasm and cheering them up with their feet. The audience then rushes out of the conference room and orders their departments to devote all their financial resources to the highest-spec, unrestricted work of improving the user experience, thus bringing revolution to the company, the product, and the world.

Damn, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit. But I'm really very often called to convince the top brass to put in the user experience.

But you might be a little surprised if I said that I would reject such "good things" every time. There is such a policy in our uie that we only challenge projects that we can guarantee to be effective. With my past experience I know I don't have a chance to convince top brass of anything, so I politely reject these "guest shows".

"But don't ask, because you're so successful, you know how to convince top brass to invest in UX, don't you?" "They always ask.

Actually, I don't know. I have marketed our service for 23 years, but I have not yet succeeded in persuading a high level of anything.

Our success has always been rooted in our customer teams, including their senior management, who already know the value of a good user experience. I didn't convince them because they had no need to be persuaded.

Do you know anyone who smokes? Well, you must know. Do you know which smoking is not the harm of smoking? I bet not. Every smoker I know knows very well the dangers of smoking to their bodies, but they still smoke. Many physical, cultural, and behavioral forces make it hard to quit smoking.

You can't persuade a smoker to give up smoking. They had to decide for themselves, all by themselves, when they felt it was time.

Top executives are like smokers. I, you, or no one else can convince a senior to put in UX.

Of course, there may be several top executives in the world have not noticed a pleasant, easy to use, easy-to-use products better than a boring, useless, difficult products. I haven't met in so many years, but maybe they still exist. Even so, I don't think a ppt can change their point of view.

So what else can you do besides PPT?

You can find out what your executives are convinced of. If they are even slightly better at their jobs, they may want to make some improvements. These improvements may be to increase profitability, reduce costs, increase the number of new customers, increase the order of existing customers, or raise the price of God horse.

Excellent user-raising sheep can help improve all of these projects. The problem is that there is no universal process or solution that will ever save the Earth to achieve these improvements. If you want me to help, I need to get to know your business in depth to achieve these improvement goals through real UX input.

(By the way, this kind of project we can accept and guarantee.) We have succeeded many times. Very expensive, but the effect is significant oh. )

Once you start talking about what the top executives have already convinced, it's easier to put them into it. You no longer need to try to change their focus. You can play directly in their main focus area (Serena).

An excellent user experience project (or worse, a PowerPoint about all the bad user experiences in the world) about Apple or some other company is unlikely to persuade anyone to change the way they do anything.

You need to do something specific to their current focus.

If it doesn't work, maybe you should work somewhere else. Go where the top brass have believed and want to put in UX. There are a lot of these companies on the market now. Take your head to the wall and do what you love to do.

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Translator Note: This year changed the company, read a lot of books, busy practice, forget the summary. But recently, the art of communication is slowly realized. Different people in the team have different weights. Any lobbying is not as effective as the actual effect, since small projects begin to improve the user experience. When others see the effect, they will slowly give you the opportunity to do more complex optimizations. Don't want to eat into a fat man. Even if there is a chance to do big projects will not necessarily be able to succeed at one time, may fail to improve the UX more adverse. What do you think?