Getting buy-in for UX in government

An interview with Monica, UX Lead, GoC Department

Monica's tweet after a day spent at UXCampOttawa 2011. Would she really head into the office at 8pm on a Saturday? I didn't call to find out until Monday.

 

Me: I saw your tweet and I was curious — what part of UXCampOttawa got you so pumped?

Monica: The whole day was great but the surprising part for me was the unconference session on getting buy-in for UX in government. Three themes emerged from the session. These were:

1. Get buy-in with stakeholders – You’ll need a senior manager to champion your cause if your department is not yet using a user-centred design process.
2. Metrics – People like numbers, so tie UX back to improvement. That means you’ll need a system in place to measure and goals that define success.
3. Skunkworks – If you’re starting from the ground up, take on a small test yourself to show the results.  Test something that would be of interest to senior management.  Show the output and the measures. Do something small and prove that it works.

Me: Is that what happened in your department?

Monica: For us it was just the perfect storm of things – the right people; including a director who was open to suggestions and therefore became a strong proponent for intentional design within our department. Someone new had joined our group from a private sector organization where they’d had a strong process around UX so we built that into our unit. Applications are more complicated than websites because there’s more interactivity so we needed a clear process anyway.

The interaction designers were tasked with the additional responsibility of ensuring Common Look and Feel 2.0 compliance. They designed both usability and accessibility in together; they had to wear both hats.  The benefit of doing it this way is that you end up with higher compliance and usability than if you tried to introduce usability later or separately from accessibility or other requirements.

Me: What process does that group use to work with clients and developers?

Monica: We were part of the application development shop. The interaction designers would get requirements from the clients and produce mock-ups to show how the front-end would look. Then they’d pass the mock-ups and requirements to the developers to build a back-end that would make it functional.  The interaction designers remain accountable for making sure the rules are followed on the final product.

You can have a design group that’s separate or integrated; I’ve worked in both scenarios. Personally I think integrated is better because you can build relationships because people get to know each other.

Me: What advice would you give others if they’re trying to integrate UX into their Web development process?

Monica: Start inside your own group. Add an interaction designer and usability person within your own team. Be patient – it takes time to get acceptance and respect within the rest of the organization. Design in accessability and usability at the same time.

The experience of the experience: meta reviews in conference going

I admit it: I am a picky conference attendee. I want things to be easy. I don’t want to be told what to do nor do I want to have to make my own decisions.  I want to talk to people who are smarter than I am, but not so smart they make me feel dumb. I want to have fun but also have an enriching experience. Yes; I am one of *those* people who can rarely be pleased.

UXCampOttawa 2011, an annual volunteer-organized event for User Experience practitioners, fell into the right space between my extremes. I noticed every detail. So did many others, who commented on the – branding, flow, way finding tools and the quality of the speakers. Yesterday, I got to hear it all.

I also got to see it all. I had a chance to take it all in and really noticed a lot of improvements from last year, as well as things I liked a lot more than some of the other events I’ve been to. Here’s why I thought it was great.

First of all, value to cost was very high. Heck, I drank $40 worth of coffee and that was before I sat down to listen to an inspiring, engaging and informative keynote by Dana Chisnell from Usability Works.

There were just the right mix of people I already know with people I haven’t met yet, many from Ottawa with a few venturing in from afar.

The main auditorium at uOttawa, host of UXCampOttawa (photo by RichLoen)

I saw some of the latest trends highlighted, shared my work and learned from other people’s experiences recent or past.

The branding looked gorgeous again this year. And the size & set-up was perfect. Logistics mostly ran smoothly, even though we got off to a late start.

UXCamp podium (photo by booklover_)

The marketing and communications were timely, informative and fun to read. Even the organizers were having fun.

Happy Halloween: Here comes UXCampOttawa (photo by @Corneliux)

Prizes: UX books from Rosenfeld Media arrive in the mail (photo by @Corneliux)

The swag was appropriate to the cost. Environmental degradation was low. Points for local food and compostable cups from Bridgehead. Everyone got a free online workshop courtesy of User Interface Engineering. And a few people won books or t-shirts.

Many unconference sessions looked interesting. It was difficult to choose one.

The Grid (photo by book lover_)

Of course, what I loved best was the community feel.

Community: we couldn't do it without everyone working together (photo by book lover_)

There sure were a lot of superhero powers in that room. I’ll leave you with the question from keynote speaker @danachis –What are we going to do with that?

Campers pondering what to do next in front of the Grid (photo by RichLoen)

UXCampOttawa here I come

I am super excited to be speaking at UXCampOttawa 2011. Also a wee bit nervous, since many attendees will be my peers for whom I have a lot of respect; colleagues who have mentored me over my short decade career working on government websites. I have learned my craft from these folks and continue to learn through work, play, conversation and collaboration with them.

Being part of the planning committee last year was so much fun. My respect for my committee colleagues  grew as we came together to organize a community-led event that sold out in less than a week! At the end of that day last November, I was pooped but proud. Proud that a dozen or so people from various sectors, with different goals for the day, put on this successful event on a tiny budget using what little time is left after work, family and all our other commitments had been met.

I hope to see you on November 5th at Ottawa U for another great day talking User Experience with old and new alike. Register now before it sells out again.

Setting myself up for failure

It’s hard to talk about failure. I mean – what is failure anyway? I find it very difficult to categorize any experience as a failure. In each “failure” there are tiny successes – a relationship made stronger, a realization, a hard earned lesson. Likewise, in every success there are many smaller failures -  harsh words unnecessarily spoken, time or effort wasted.

Fear of failure or fear of success? Or…

Being on vacation these last few days, I’ve had time to reflect on my summer, my work, my life. And I’ve been thinking — is it a success? How do I define success?

I’ve come to the conclusion that a successful life is one that is full of failures. Many failures means limits were pushed, lessons were learned (hopefully) and opportunities were taken.

I don’t believe I’ve had enough failure in my life. I have regrets – which can generally be summed up as times that I hurt someone (usually unintentionally…but still…). What I don’t have is a lot of evidence that I have seen a challenge, tried my damnedest, and fallen short. Which lead me to think that maybe I have a tendency to only take on challenges when I know I can succeed. I haven’t yet given myself permission to fail. My ego is getting in the way. I’m too afraid of being embarrassed or what people may say about me to really achieve A-N-Y-thing.

So, that’s my mindset heading back to the office. I am not going to let my beliefs limit my experiences. I am going to strive for bigger and better things. Not only will I give myself permission to fail – I will see doing so as evidence of success. Evidence of a life lived on the edge of my own capabilities. One in which I strive for more than what I know I can do already.

Continuously improve your website by getting WET

By now you probably know that the Common Look and Feel for the Internet 2.0 Standard (CLF 2.0) is being replaced by 3 new Standards.  To support this change, Web specialists inside and outside government are developing tools and templates that anyone in the world can use. It’s called the Web Experience Toolkit (#WxT).

Implementing the toolkit will put you ahead of the curve in three ways – one,

Measuring the performance of your online services

It’s really hard to imagine (for me anyway) that I will be presenting at the conference ”Performance Measurement And Management For Government: How To Enhance Transparency, Set Priorities, Monitor Progress, & Drive Results”  presented by the Advanced Learning Institute in Ottawa October 17 – 20, 2011.

Why am I doing this? Well, first of all, I had not yet taken this new job that has me

Taking the discovery-driven approach

Once in a while an article comes your way that gives you the language needed to articulate what’s going on in your own life. This quote from Requirements-Driven Development Must Die (via @zwinglix) summarizes perfectly what I’ve been going through as I work through a large-scale web design project:

…(we need to) isolate the need from the solution so the solution can be developed such that all needs are balanced with one another. But because people have so much trouble articulating their needs, it’s hard to identify them all without giving them something to react to.

The author says one danger of providing designs to react to is that people may get

What are you doing with your Community of Practice?

I had the pleasure of attending the Web Analytics Community of Practice last week. Over the past year or so they have blossomed into a group of practitioners who share ideas and work together to resolve common issues. It got me to thinking about what makes for a productive group of self-organized people.

Here’s a quick list of things this Community has (mostly) done, and you can too, to move 

Collaborative Policy Development: A Case Study

Last week I shared what the User Experience Working Group is up to. This is a presentation I did for the Policy Entrepreneurs in May 2011 that will explain a bit about why I decided to come and work on the Standard full time.

…You can also view the video on vimeo. The format was originally delivered in an Ignite style – which is really challenging. I can’t even force myself to admit how long I spent working on this. Overall it was a great experience though.

New Job Nerves

Today is my first day at my new job. For the next year I will be working on developing and implementing the (forthcoming) Standard on Web Usability for the Government of Canada. I’m really excited to take on this challenge; to try to broker the change required to move us all to modern, user-centred websites. I’m also a bit nervous.

The new approach means change for everyone. And as we know, not everyone likes change. Which means people might not like me. Not so much that I am willing to sacrifice