Chapter 14
Agenda/Learning Objectives
Evaluate different UCD team configurations
1) Evaluate different UCD team configurations
a) Every team or group of people working together is different
b) Teams are influenced by:
i) Organizational culture
c) Dedicated UCD Team, Dedicated UCD Organization
i) Committed to putting user needs and wants first
ii) Product is created using a UCD methodology
iii) Product is marketed and sold to targeted users as being about and for them
d) UCD Representative as Part of Dedicated Development Team
i) Designer tasked with directing UCD efforts
ii) Team is likely composed of people with mixed roles who may not have an interest or
e) UCD Representative as Part of Ad Hoc Development Team
i) Team created for a specific purpose (one-time or infrequent project)
ii) May be employee or contractor
iii) Most team members are pulled from elsewhere in the organization and their
iv) You must be a UCD educator and advocate; construct a plan that builds support for
implementing an UCD approach
f) Find out: (Under and Chandler 2012)
i) What past projects were carried out? Were they successful? If not, why did they fail?
ii) What technology is at your disposal to do your work? Does the organization support
remote or virtual work?
iii) What is the management culture of the organization?
2) Discuss UCD team management strategies
a) You could be leading a team of fellow designers, technical experts, or ad hoc personnel
b) You are the one responsible for fostering a productive team culture that allows for the
successful delivery of the product
c) Put it in a Plan
i) Develop a plan for how youre going to get from development to use
ii) Determine:
(1) What resources do we need to complete the product design? People? Tools? Money?
iii) Consider project management tools (i.e. Gantt charts that list key deliverables and
graphical representation of when each deliverable will be achieved within the project
timeline)
d) Put on a show
i) Dont let your team work in isolation
ii) Let everyone know what your team is doing (pending proprietary or legal restrictions)
(1) UX designer: Responsible for researching and designing the overall user experience,
including conducting user testing, prototyping, field research and combing through
analytics.
(2) UI designer: Responsible for making sure the user can interact with and understand
the product as intuitively as possible through the design and layout of visual
elements.
g) Put in time to practice sharing, experimenting, and solving together
i) Promote hands-on activities that prevent your team members from hiding inside of their
roles or looking at the product from behind a narrow disciplinary prism
ii) Practice DevOps: encourage developers and operations personnel to engage with each
iii) Set up daily if not weekly standups where team members have to talk about what they
are working on and get feedback from others
iv) Lead by example; show your team that you can take feedback so they know how to do it
constructively
i) Put yourself in the right position to advocate for your team
iii) If the team sees the leader so willing to advocate on behalf of the team that the leader
takes all of the blame when failure occurs, the team will have more trust in the leader and
more motivation to work together to be successful
j) Put it on the board
k) Put away old ways of thinking about how to work
i) Distributed, virtual work has challenges of:
(1) Creating an open, collaborative workspace
(2) Interfacing regularly with users to get their feedback
(3) Managing project timelines with team members potentially spread around the world
living in various time zones
3) Explore traits of effective UCD team members
a) What makes an effective team member?
i) Driskell et al. (2006) consider the following team member traits conducive to team
performance: emotional stability, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and
contentiousness