[Sigia-l] Increases in design spending?

[Brett Ingram]

Here's my anecdote. It matches closely what Joe postulated.

I work for the in-house interface design staff for a large insurance 
carrier. We staffed up almost 2 years ago, which was when I was hired. 
At that time our team did traditional graphic design, interface design 
for the Web and usability engineering. The interface design and 
usability engineering came about when the company Web site design and 
development was brought in-house. It previously had been done by a 
vendor. It was a big success for the team and the company which led to 
more demand within the company for the team's service. This happened 
right before I started. I have a background in interface design and 
usability and have worked as an information architect, so my skills 
were a good fit (lucky for me in this economy!)

Since I have worked here, we have worked on Web sites for the company, 
including another redesign of the main consumer facing site. Because of 
our usability focus and our success we have also been increasingly 
asked to work on intranet sites.

Again, we have decided to bring work in-house that had previously been 
done by a vendor. This time, it is on a much larger scale. We are 
replacing software that had been supplied a large, well known database 
company. It did not meet our needs and was expensive to customize. It 
was also determined that it needs to be turned into an extranet so our 
producers have a lot more flexibility in the future than they currently 
have. With a project of this size, we are again staffing up to be able 
to meet the demand. 

So, you can see, there is a bit of a pattern of not being completely 
happy with vendor services, bringing work in-house, which has led to 
bringing more work in-house that had been supplied by a vendor. All 
along, adding more in-house staff as more work has been internalized.


> 
> Many senior managers and executives inside what used to be called Old 
Economy corporations now understand the necessity of using the internet 
as a fundamental channel for their businesses, and consequently now 
regard the ability to produce and maintain high quality internet 
properties as a basic business capability...  
> 
> Joe Lamantia


Thanks,

Brett Ingram
User Experience Architect