Publications on Strategic Management of Usability

Applying User-Centered Methods to Inform New Product Selection and Strategic Planning

UPA 15th Annual Conference, Broomfield, CO, 2006

Tim Herbst, Bill Dixon, Lisa Battle, Sean Wheeler

Usability professionals always say the best time to start user-centered design is at the beginning of a project. But what about starting even earlier, when the vision or concept is first considered? This presentation discusses integrating UCD with marketing methods to inform/support executive decision-making and strategic prioritization of projects.

The Usability Professional as Visionary/Strategist

User Focus, UPA DC Chapter conference, Washington, D.C., 2006

Duane Degler

Have you had insights and observations that go beyond the scope of a particular system or site? Are you talking with business leaders, sharing how things could be better for users overall? A quality user experience is important for organizations and their customers, citizens, and staff. User advocates can take on a "thought leadership" role within organizations and projects. How do we do that?

When Your Group Can’t Do It All: Investing UCD Resources Wisely

UPA 13th Annual Conference, Minneapolis, MN, 2004

Lisa Battle

When an organization’s internal UCD group is too small to support all projects that request its services, management is faced with a need to prioritize and invest its limited resources wisely. This is how one UCD group defined different levels of service and implemented criteria for evaluating project requests.
Matt Oliphant's blog on this presentation

Nurturing Change: Introducing User-Centered Design to a Large Software Development Organization

EPSS Revisited: A Lifecycle for Developing Performance-Centered Systems, ed. Gary Dickelman, International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI), 2003

Sean Wheeler, Brenda D’Angelo, and Lisa Battle

How can a small internal usability group introduce user-centered methods into a large, traditional software development organization? This book chapter presents a case study of our experience in doing just that. We discuss the challenges we encountered in the process of organizational change, and describe the pilot projects and user-centered techniques that seemed most effective for us during this evolutionary process.