[Sigia-l] Where is usability in the org chart?

[Stewart Dean]

Hi Tim,

I read your question and found it hard to parse.  I have, for a while now, 
preached that usability is not a person's role, nor is it one person's 
responsibility and it's best treated as a ambient aspect of any project.

As an information architect I have shouldered most of the user centered 
design burdon, especially when it come down to user research, but I am a 
freelancer so I can't vouch for where I sit in a org chart. In those I deal 
with the department heads, internal project managers and marketing 
representatives have always been my stake holders with additional advocates 
added from customer relationship teams in many cases.

In other organisations the web manager / web master is often the person who 
looks after the users needs the most (providing the peopel who set up the 
web team didnt see it as a tech challenge first and foremost).

In short usabillity is part of the set or requirements looked after by those 
who look after the site, so find out who is responsible for the site and 
you'll find folks who 'do' usability.  I personaly see the title 'usability 
professional' as a title that won't ring true with many these days - the 
term 'user expereince' is far more prevelent and enable freedom from often 
overly academic and non pragmatic thinking.

Maybe not the answer you where looking for but one borne from real world 
expereince.

Stewart Dean
empathy digital




>From: <taltom at iei.net>
>Reply-To: taltom at iei.net
>To: sigia-l at asis.org
>Subject: [Sigia-l] Where is usability in the org chart?
>Date: Tue, 23 May 2006 10:59:16 -0400
>
>I'm sure this must have come up in discussion before, but a search of the
>archives turned up nothing of consequence, perhaps because the number of 
>possible
>keywords is rather large.
>
>The question is twofold: First, where is usability located on your org 
>chart? And
>second, what are the pros and cons of being there?
>
>There are multiple reasons for asking this. The trigger was a request by a 
>client
>to compile a table of representative organizations and where usability fit 
>there.
>But there turned out to be darned little compiled anywhere. And with World
>Usability Day coming up, our chapter of UPA is trying to make contact with 
>the
>hidden usability population in our area.
>
>Tim Altom
>
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>Searchable Archive at http://www.info-arch.org/lists/sigia-l/
>
>Most presentations/papers and posters have been loaded to the IA Summit 06 
>website:
>
>http://iasummit.org/2006/conferencedescrip.htm
>http://iasummit.org/2006/posters.htm
>
>
>
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