Speaking in Tongues

“Speak the users language” is a great design principle. One sure way to put customers off is to litter your communications with marketese, legalese, corporate and tech speak. You might as well be speaking in a differing language.

However of equal importance is learning to speak in business language and pitching your case at the right level. You can bet your last dollar that general managers and senior stakeholders will clamouring for the door if you start preaching about the intricate usability benefits of a specific drop shadow treatment on a button control.

Anyone reading this, will probably at some point in their career, will have experienced the uphill struggle to convince clients or colleagues about the benefits of taking time to develop a usable product. But we need to learn to practise what we preach in all dimensions. We need to take time to understand the business need, the perspective of the business manager and be able to talk to them in their language.

For a long time we have evangelised about the need to talk to users and I think that there has been a propensity amongst some practitioners to go to far in the customer direction. Of course we need to talk to customers to create good customer experiences, because without happy customers there is no business. But equally if we don’t help to improve the business situation, then especially in these financially uncertain times, then it could very well mean the end for the business.

You need to learn to understand and speak strategy. How will what you do in customer experience design contribute to achieving the strategic or project goals? You need to constantly ask yourself value you are adding for the business as well as the customer.

When you are talking to senior managers you need to always be able to tie your efforts back to their direction and measures of success. Ask if there is a justifiable business case? At the end of the day it really doesn’t matter if you’ve applied Fitt’s law correctly if your design is not facilitating the business objectives to increase sales.