Month: May 2007

One of the biggest challenges when designing a new product (or significant revision to existing product) is to get everyone else in the company behind you and the project. A sure way to do that is to build out (in prototype form) the most visible, core functional areas that are ever-present in the product, like the main navigation and branded panels (ie, the chrome) to make it really seem like it’s coming alive. PM’s, VP’s, Directors, Leads from other departments can connect to that easily. Else it’s just pretty pictures all disconnected from separate prototype pages/components that lack coherence, too random, not congealing…gotta make it “real” as THE THING TO BE for all to look upon and point to.

As a team evolves its own internal user experience competency within the overall corporate machine, a hi-risk danger arises when the “informal” becomes the “formal” , with the introduction of processes, systems, protocols for everyone to follow. The team gains more people, more tasks to do, the workload increases and schedules shorten. Tempting to clamp down and insert some ways to regulate and control, but need to remember the balance/moderation ideal. And don’t kill the great momentum from the earlier informal days when the team first started…