FACILITATING THE SPREAD OF KNOWLEDGE AND INNOVATION IN PROFESSIONAL SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

Business, Design
and Technology
Joining Forces for a Truly Competitive Advantage
eMag Issue 32 - September 2015

ARTICLE INTERVIEW ARTICLE

Business, Design, When Technology and UX: Are You

and Technology Design Collide, then Collude Doing It Yet?
Business, Design and Technology // eMag Issue 32 - Sep 2015 1
Business, Design, and Technology:
Joining Forces for a Truly Competitive Advantage
The list of industries being disrupted by digital technologies is growing. To embrace this new digital
world, companies need to change their practices and the way they use technology.

Business, Design, and

Engineering: Developing
Collaboration Culture
The collaboration of a company and its multidisciplinary units has
never been more crucial than now. Everything we make today depends
upon our ability to stay current, move nimbly, innovate, engage and
delight. Those things are too difficult to achieve without cross-team col-
laboration.

UX: Are You Doing It Yet?

An estimated 70% of technology projects fail due to a lack
of user adoption. Shouldn’t organizations understand their
users and product as much as possible in order to prevent
this from happening? Ted McCarthy explains how success-
ful organizations emphasize and invest in UX, integrating
it into their teams alongside product and engineering, and
offers some useful tips along the way.

Interview: When Technology

and Design Collide, then Collude
Does design shape technology or does technology shape design? How do these two disciplines
work together, and move away from the traditional siloed approach? In this virtual panel
Sam Gibson and Ben Melbourne discuss the importance of overcoming adversity between
technologists and designers by offering tactical approaches to solving these common issues.

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 SARAH isThoughtWorks,
a Senior Content Strategist for
a global technology
HOWE company with over 3,200 employees
worldwide. For the past 13 years she has been
focused on developing the right communication
and messages to attract and recruit top tech talent in
the accounting, investment banking and technology
industries. She currently leads the content and
communication strategy for the ThoughtWorks
website, working with various stakeholders to ensure
the message is on point and appealing to the right
prospects and potential recruits. Great user experience
is paramount to her role, so leading the global content
strategy for the ThoughtWorks Experience Design
group was a natural fit, keeping her abreast of the
latest happenings across the UX industry. Find her
tweeting @sarahmariehowe.

A LETTER FROM
THE EDITOR

The marketplace is changing. Disrupt or be dis-
rupted. Traditional approaches to building great
software are quickly falling by the wayside. With
myriad of smaller, more nimble competitors
rapidly entering the marketplace, your business
must innovate rapidly to survive and thrive.
We face another challenge. Digital natives
have short attention spans, they want to get to
where they’re going - and fast. They refuse to
fumble through poor user experiences, and ex-
pect changes and improvements frequently.
How will your business adapt and keep
ahead to serve the upcoming generations?
Creating great online user experiences for
your audience is no longer a ‘nice to have’, every
organization must embed UX into the ‘business
as usual’ in order to remain competitive today.
We are all becoming technology companies.
It’s no longer acceptable to have teams
siloed, unrealistic design needs to stop being
lobed over the proverbial wall - and developers
can no longer refuse to listen to UX research and
processes. Designers and Technologists must
align closer for the benefit of the end user, or
they’ll simply go choose your competitor instead.
This eMag offers readers tactical approach-
es to building software experiences that your us-
ers will love. Break down existing silos and create
an environment for cross-collaborative teams:
placing technology, business and user experi-
ence design at the core.
In the first article, Ben Melbourne explains
why working closely together is the only way to
unlock a company’s full potential. Offering ac-
tionable advice, he outlines why Business peo-
ple, Designers and Technologists have to join
forces in order to win.
Jaimee Newberry shares her five mind shifts
to overcome obstacles and unlock better collab-
orative rhythms within organisations.
Following on, Ted McCarthy explains why
understanding your users or customers and find-
ing product/market fit is key to software devel-
opment today.
In an interview with Sam Gibson and Ben
Melbourne, they discuss the importance of over-
coming adversity between technologists and de-
signers by offering tactical approaches to solving
some of the most common people issues teams
face.

4 Business, Design and Technology // eMag Issue 32 - Sep 2015

 Read online on InfoQ

Business, Design, and Technology: Joining

Forces for a Truly Competitive Advantage

Ben Melbourne’s business card says he’s an experience-design consultant at ThoughtWorks.

He does a combination of design strategy, software delivery, and coaching. He’s often heard
preaching about how designers need to become more adaptable and lean. Now that he
has gone agile, he can never go back. The joy of working in a multidisciplinary, collaborative
software delivery teams is too strong. Producing pretty deliverables just doesn’t give the same
thrill it used to once you have delivered actual working software.

Introduction ignores the need to adapt risks acting as handbrake on progress.

Technology is no longer an ex-
pensive monolith that busi-
nesses need to be overcome to
succeed. In the emerging digital
economy, companies are learn-
ing new ways to put technolo-
gy to work. They are reshaping
their business models and the
relationships they have with cus-
tomers.
The list of industries dis-
rupted by digital technologies is
growing. The recording industry,
banks, retailers, telcos, and taxi
services are just the beginning.
Any industry yet to be disrupted
need only wait until the genera-
tion of digital natives becomes
the majority. Any company that
going the way of Kodak.
To embrace this new dig-
ital world, companies have to
change their practices and the
way they use technology. The
traditional IT focus on systems
and infrastructure is fast becom-
ing an outdated approach. It’s no
longer enough for companies to
have a segregated IT department
hidden in a basement some-
where. Technologists need to do
more than provide services to
other parts of the business.
Technologists need to be
part of the conversation before
technology becomes the solu-
tion. Technology is increasingly
enabling new ideas, rather than
Technologists can help explore
business challenges and discover
new ways to solve them. Compa-
nies that know how to do this are
realising the benefits of the digi-
tal economy. This is the source of
digital disruption — along with
the solution to surviving it.
Close collaboration be-
tween business people and tech-
nologists produces a greater and
more innovative result. Smart
companies realise this. The rise of
the position of chief digital offi-
cer is a sign of the shift in mind-
set.
The key tool that enables
digital innovation is design think-
ing. Design thinking fuels a col-

Business, Design and Technology // eMag Issue 32 - Sep 2015 5

laborative approach to problem
exploration. It “uses the design-
er’s sensibility and methods to
match people’s needs with what
is technologically feasible and
what a viable business strategy
can convert into customer value
and market opportunity,” accord-
ing to Tim Brown in Harvard Busi-
ness Review (June 2008).
For years, designers have
been using their research skills
to understand customer needs.
Just as developers are trained
to code, designers are trained to
reframe and solve problems. This
fuels alternative thinking, inspir-
ing new, creative solutions. These
are the skills required to survive
and thrive in the ever-changing
digital landscape.
Where designers often fall
short is that they (just like busi-
ness people) often see technol-
ogists as an obstacle instead of
collaborative partners in crafting
great solutions.
Designers have long been
guilty of removing themselves
from the larger process, choosing
to hide in colourful design-agen-
cy offices with their headphones
on and deeming technologists
only worthy of seeing the solu-
tion as it sails over the meta-
phorical wall — and not until it
is perfectly crafted, with a ribbon
wrapped around it.
This way of working is fast
becoming obsolete, just like
camera film and dedicated MP3
players.
To get a competitive advan-
tage, break down this function-
al divide. To get ahead and stay
there, business people, design-
ers, and technologists have to
join forces. Working closely to-
gether is the only way to unlock
a company’s enterprise potential.
Being innovative in the digi-
tal space requires creating some-
thing that’s viable (business),
desirable (design), and feasible
(technology).
6 Business, Design and Technology // eMag Issue 32 - Sep 2015
So, how do you change the
way a company works and em-
brace digital technology?
Multidisciplinary
collaboration
Startups have it easy when it
comes to multidisciplinary col-
laboration. With only a handful
of people involved, everyone is
forced to work together. At the
enterprise level, bureaucracy
gets in the way.
This can be overcome. Start
small. Focus on individual teams
or projects. All it takes is a desire
to share and learn from other dis-
ciplines and to invite them into
the conversation.
There are a few obvious
ways to do this. Designers em-
bedded in delivery teams are
becoming commonplace. This is
often driven by the need for UI
design. It lets them continually
bring the voice of the customer
and their feedback into the team.
Take technologists and
business people out into the field
for user research. It is perfect op-
portunity for everyone to learn
about customers together. This
means that everyone, not only
the designers, can become cus-
tomer advocates.
Collaboration becomes
harder when exploring and de-
fining business problems. It’s
common for designers and busi-
ness people to work together on
problems, usually well before
technology becomes a consid-
eration. Often budgets and re-
sourcing become reasons not to
bring technologists to this space.
This is a missed opportuni-
ty. Technologists bring a different
mindset. They can reshape the
thinking about how technology
can help. They can provide use-
ful tools or discourage paths that
aren’t feasible. If nothing else, in-
viting them is an opportunity to
share the context of the problem.
This creates a better understand-
ing of the business goals once
the project moves into the deliv-
ery phase.
Change your
measurement metrics
Focus on providing value to the
customers. Measure customer
value, not individual activities.
Traditional organisational
hierarchies are structured and
segmented by skill sets and func-
tions. This model is a legacy of
19th-century, Fordism manage-
ment theory designed to guide
mass production. In this struc-
ture, managers focused on mea-
suring and improving the per-
formance of individuals. (John
Seddon, Freedom from Command
and Control, 2003, pp 15-23).
This model breaks down for
knowledge workers. When per-
formance measurement focuses
on individual activities, it focuses
employees on internal targets.
This encourages individuals to
game the metrics and compete
against co-workers. They should
instead be using their skills and
creativity to deliver value to cus-
tomers.
Multidisciplinary teams
should focus on delivering value
to customers, not internal hier-
archies. Create teams that have
a clear external purpose, along
with the mix of skills required to
achieve it. This breaks down bar-
riers, creates efficiencies, and fu-
els collaboration.
Collocate teams and
create physical space
for collaboration
Sit a team of co-workers in a
common area. Remove the barri-
ers from the physical space. Pull
down partitions. Use bench desks
that allow people to sit next to
each other. Provide flexible spac-
es that teams can adjust to suit
their needs. Open up wall space
upon which teams can post and
visualise their work. Create infor-
mation radiators that share ideas.
 A collaborative team space
can spark a change to the way
teams work without the need for
an organisational restructuring.
Collaboration comes naturally to
people. Create a suitable physical
space and it will organically hap-
pen.
This doesn’t only mean cre-
ating one big open-plan office. A
diversity of environments allows
different types of work activities.
Break out spaces as required for
smaller discussions among two
or three people. Sometimes a
quiet space is needed for focused
thinking or to take a phone call.
What is important is that teams
can easily communicate with
minimal barriers.
Become agile (with a
small A)
Agile software-development
methodologies (such as ex-
treme programming or Scrum)
have revolutionised the industry.
Once seen as a hippie alternative,
agile has gone mainstream and is
now used by most large organi-
sations.
The ability to release
software early and often has
changed the game. It delivers
business value regularly, rath-
er than taking years to launch a
product. Iterative software devel-
opment puts control back in the
hands of the business owner. It is
a big part of why technology has
become an enabler rather than a
blocker.
The down side is that agile
methodologies have become
industry buzzwords. People
have become fixated on argu-
ments about the practices and
techniques. Don’t worry about
whether you do stand-ups or
scrums. Focus on validating your
ideas, shortening your feedback
cycles, and adjusting to new les-
sons. The true purpose for being
agile is being adaptable and re-
sponsive to change.
Business, Design and Technology // eMag Issue 32 - Sep 2015
Take lots of small bets to an external design agency
Think big; start small. The sim- does. This only formalises the di-
ple trick to being innovative is to vide.
take many small, cheap chances. Once you admit that this
Don’t bet your house, car, and approach is flawed, you can start
boat on black all at once. When the conversation and search for
you have too much to lose you alternatives.
become trapped in one concept To be a winning team,
and fight for it well after it’s prov- business people, designers, and
en flawed. developers must all join forces.
We learn by doing. The only From this collaboration of com-
way to see if/how something plementary skills comes a truly
works is to try it and see. Test competitive advantage. It allows
new ideas as inexpensively as us to get on with the job of work-
possible. If you haven’t invested ing together to delivering value
too much in an idea, you can em- to customers.
brace the lessons of failure and The question is, do you
move on. need to stop denying that there
The same principle applies is a divide?
to new internal practices or new
products. If the answer to a prob-
lem were obvious, someone else
would already have solved it.
Innovation and pushing bound-
aries means venturing into the
unknown.
There is a science to this. It
starts having the will to fail, and
then learning how to fail quickly.
The better you get, the shorter
your feedback cycles. The quick-
er you learn if something works,
the quicker you can cut your loss-
es and try something else.
There are all kinds of lean
learning tools out there: guerrilla
research, innovation labs, rapid
prototyping, and more. They all
focus on learning as quickly and
efficiently as possible.
Stop ignoring the
divide among business,
designers and
technologists
As with any addiction, the first
step is to admit you have a prob-
lem. Just because it’s always been
done this way doesn’t mean it’s
the right way.
The model of an IT depart-
ment siloed from other parts of
the business creates a perma-
nent disconnect. It stifles collab-
oration as much as a business
outsourcing all creative thinking
7
 Read online on InfoQ

Business, Design, and Engineering:

Developing Collaboration Culture

Jaimee Newberry is an independent consultant, coach, mentor, speaker, and writer. Her
practice is focused on coaching and mentoring corporate, enterprise-software, and executive-
team leaders in creating healthier, more communicative teams through user-experience-
centered practices. She’s worked with some of the world’s best and continues helping top teams
grow stronger, happier, and more efficient, making more focused and empathetic products.
Her work also extends into individual coaching engagements. Past and present clients include
writers, developers, musicians, interior designers, UX practitioners, and CEOs in pursuit of self-
improvement and/or getting unstuck personally and professionally.

The collaboration of a company and its multidisciplinary units has

never been more crucial. Everything we make depends upon our ability
to move nimbly, innovate, and delight, which is too difficult to achieve
without cross-team collaboration.

How can we unlock better col-
laborative rhythms within orga-
nizations that use tried and true
processes that have worked for
eons but may not be working
any longer?
One of my favorite quotes
to use in talks and in client ses-
sions comes from Aarron Walter’s
book  Designing for Emotion. He
writes, “Knowing who your users
are is only half the question. You
also have to know who you are.”
He means you have to really un-
derstand who you are as a brand,
a culture, and as a company. The
better you know yourself and
your customers, the better your
ability to communicate through
your product and engage them
emotionally.
Walter’s book inspired me
to deeply explore who we are as
teams making products for users,
and I’m excited to share what I’ve
learned.
After more than 16 years of
focusing on user experience in
the context of interactive prod-
ucts, software, websites and mo-
bile applications, and combining
that experience with life-coach-
ing training, I’ve shifted my fo-
cus to expand UX thinking to
incorporate the teams that make
products. The key to creating
more harmony and eagerness in
team collaboration, I’ve found, is
to fold some shifts in process and
mindset into your company’s cul-
ture.
There are three common
scenarios I encounter with cli-
ents seeking my help with team
collaboration, improved product

8 Business, Design and Technology // eMag Issue 32 - Sep 2015

and team focus, and better prod-
uct outcomes, described in the
following scenarios.
Scenario 1
A product or feature is presented
to the design and development
teams for implementation by a
deadline.
Common challenges:
• The teams work in silos and
are not set up for collabora-
tion; they are set up to keep
doing things the way they’ve
always been done.
• There is no time to try to do
things a different way.
• Meetings are considered col-
laboration.
• Design and developer teams
have to redo a lot of work
because they run into un-
foreseen challenges that may
have been prevented by earli-
er communication.
Scenario 2
The business keeps adding fea-
tures or revisions.
Common challenges:
• Missed or extended dead-
lines.
• Frustrated teams.
• Finger-pointing and blame.
• Decreased team morale.
• Budgets are blown.
Scenario 3
An outside agency has been hired
to advise and execute an innova-
tion that will later be handed off
to the in-house team.
Common challenges:
• Tension between teams.
• Demotivation of the in-house
team.
• The most successful out-
comes of these common case
scenarios happen with com-
panies willing to embrace
some of the following shifts
in their process and to put
Business, Design and Technology // eMag Issue 32 - Sep 2015
more care and consideration
toward the people.
Shift 1: Understand and
embrace a UX mindset
UX mindset is all about putting
people first.
UX mindset reframes the
definition of “user experience”. As
brands, enterprises, or corporate
cultures, we need to think about
UX as a responsibility, not as a
role. UX is the responsibility of the
company and of each individual
employee, consultant, or contrac-
tor that works there. Yes, there are
UX practitioners, UX designers,
directors of UX, CXOs, and other
titles that try to wrap some sort of
identity around the act of being
responsible and empathetic to a
product’s end users. A negative
effect of having “UX people” on
staff is that it has removed some
responsibility for user-sensitive
thinking from the rest of the com-
pany. Your products and your us-
ers need the support of everyone
in the company.
Shift 2: Collaborate from
the “why”
Everyone involved needs to un-
derstand the “why” behind what
they’re going to be doing. Start
the exploration of every project,
feature, or requirement by fram-
ing the problem that needs to
be solved and the outcome that
needs to be met. Avoid present-
ing the team with a solution or
a “we need you to make this in
order to solve this” statement.
Involvement from the prob-
lem-solving stage plants the seed
of care and ownership.
Keep it general to start: as-
semble a small multidisciplinary
team including at least business,
design, and engineering repre-
sentatives who will ideally be able
to not only kick off the project
but also see it through to launch.
Identify the stakeholders
and get alignment from day one.
This is the only way to manage
scope creep further down the
road. The project team needs to
ensure alignment on the “why”
and that everyone is clear on the
problem that needs to be solved.
Continue alignment communi-
cation once you identify a solu-
tion. Over-communicate status
throughout the project to instill
trust.
If your company’s structure
is not currently conducive to
working this way, find a low-im-
pact project to pilot with. It’s
smart to start small.
Shift 3: Respect for roles
Lack of respect for roles can result
in a lot of unnecessary misunder-
standing, demotivation, or feel-
ing defensive and territorial.
Respect comes from un-
derstanding the value of anoth-
er person’s role or contribution
on a larger scale. Understanding
that someone was likely hired
because he had a skill set that
would contribute to the collec-
tive vision doesn’t always carry a
great deal of weight, especially
when self-appointed titles are
more common than not. True
respect for roles comes from re-
lating to other people at a more
human level. Who are the people
we work with? What are their lives
like?
Help individuals cultivate re-
spect for the roles of other teams
by building time into workdays
during which people can get to
know each other. After-hours
happy hours and holiday parties
are generally appreciated but are
not an ideal setting for getting to
know people at the most honest,
human level.
Assembling small multidis-
ciplinary teams to tackle business
challenges, and building in the
time for them to think and talk
over coffee, is a better approach.
This applies to outside vendors,
as well. If an outside agency is
necessary, it’s important to estab-
lish a human rapport among the
9
individuals that will be working
together.
Encourage understanding
and respect around working to-
gether toward a common goal.
Shift 4: Improve
communication
I’ve not seen one company to
date that has a demonstrated
knack for perfect communica-
tion. Everyone could stand to
improve their communication
practices. A great place to start is
by encouraging and supporting
open, honest communication.
True UX mindset would demon-
strate empathy and respectful
but direct communication from
everyone without fear of termi-
nation or stepping on toes. While
communication cannot be em-
phasized enough, it’s important
to remember that listening is a
huge part of the equation.
Word choice is a pillar of
importance in communication,
and something I am constantly
seeking to improve. Avoid words
that hold an individual respon-
sible for something gone awry;
instead, frame the situation and
approach with a focus on how
you can work together to make
the situation better.
Even the smallest switch
from words with negative or
fight-based undertones to more
positive words can subconscious-
ly impact people. For example, it
might seem innocent to refer to
project kickoff meeting as “gear-
ing up for battle” but that can set
an underlying tone of “we need
to be prepared to fight.” Instead,
explore ways to reframe how you
refer to a kickoff meeting.
Awareness of word choices
can make a surprising difference
in team communication and
overall morale.
Shift 5: Encouragement
to embrace change
Change is often uncomfortable.
Embracing change is a cultural
10 Business, Design and Technology // eMag Issue 32 - Sep 2015
shift as much as is the adoption
of a general UX mindset. Demon-
strating by example is one of
the best ways to establish this
in a company. A great habit to
form is to frequently ask, “What’s
good?” The question reminds
people that no matter the situ-
ation, they can likely find some
good aspects and shift the focus
to those. Every project, change,
and shift is bound to encounter
a rough patch or two, but it’s
important when embarking on
change to identify what is good
and to not lose sight of it. It’s also
important to encourage focus on
the positive.
A culture that welcomes
change is one that can stimulate
individuals, teams, and com-
panies. Without change, there
would be no progress, no inno-
vation, no excitement. Change
invites adventure and curiosity.
For clients that have chosen
to take on these changes, adopt-
ing these shifts in process has
proven time and again to result in
more than just resolutions to the
challenges identified in the most
common scenarios. Their teams
are becoming happier, healthier
teams that are more inspired to
collaborate, with individuals that
feel more empowered to lead
continued collaboration efforts.
Incredible rewards often start
surfacing as a result, such as the
improvements listed below.
More innovation from
within
Teams that understand the “why”
and are aligned early on may add
value in the most unanticipat-
ed ways. The business may have
otherwise never known that Jo-
anne the developer was a heli-
copter mechanic in the army for
seven years before becoming the
awesome coder she is today, and
that she has a brilliant, almost
instant solution to bring to life
Jerry the designer’s concept for
solving the business problem.
Sometimes we don’t know
the power of the people we’ve al-
ready got on our teams until we
open up to more collaborative
ways of working.
Increased morale,
creativity, and
ownership
Team members who are more in-
spired to collaborate bring ener-
gy and ideas to the table because
they have a chance to see their
contributions come to life and
benefit the entire company.
Individuals feel better
about their participation and
their role in the business. Teams
with strong morale and owner-
ship are teams that care deeply
about what they put out into the
world. That is an asset every com-
pany should find invaluable.
Greater ROI or long-term
cost savings
Each project is sure to have its
obstacles and unforeseen chal-
lenges but collaboration early on
lets you anticipate the required
time, materials, and resources
and presents a broader collec-
tion of possible solutions, which
almost always results in better
solutions early on. The opportu-
nities to get it right from the start
increase, saving time and mon-
ey on starting over. When your
culture considers the end-user
experience, your customers will
feel it when they use your prod-
uct.
Cultivating more collabora-
tive work environments is about
constantly improving upon the
processes we put our people
through. Our processes need to
be about people: the human be-
ings that make products for other
human beings. The happier and
healthier the people making the
products, the more care they will
pour into the things they make.
A care-invested product radiates
its quality and the consideration
paid to, and for, the end user.
 Read online on InfoQ

UX: Are You Doing It Yet?

Ted McCarthy is passionate about the ways in which technology and data are changing the
world — for better and worse. While he thinks our increasingly mobile tech-driven, data-driven
world holds great promise for improving our health, transportation, governance, and maybe
even the environment over the next several decades, he believes we’re going to have to remain
vigilant of the ways in which technology wends its way into our lives to ensure it continues to
benefit and enrich us. With great technological power comes great technological responsibility.
You can find him on Twitter @thisrunson

Over the past decade, user experience research and design — often
simply “UX” — has gained an increasingly prominent position in the
world of tech. While the field has faced opposition within the industry,
successful organizations are learning that investing in UX pays off.
Technology giants have large or business processes — as well And it  does  really work —
and diverse UX teams, and con- as what doesn’t even exist yet, business schools everywhere
tinue to grow them: Apple, Goo- but should — and incorporating are realizing the value of  itera-
gle,  Facebook, and  Amazon all those findings into product de- tive design and research, and for
hire UX researchers and design- velopment. good reason: companies offering
ers out of top graduate programs Mitch Stein, who led a num- positive customer experiences
worldwide. And their recruit- ber of successful product releas- see dramatically higher perfor-
ment efforts offer a significant re- es at Apple,  said, “You do [UX mance  relative to their peers.
turn on investment. UX isn’t just research] not just to tackle the Watermark Consulting examined
about design or about making problem you think you’re solving Forrester’s  Customer Experience
things pretty — it’s about under- —you need to understand the Index over a six-year period and
standing your users or customers culture [users] live in, what mo- found that companies in the in-
and finding  product/market fit. tivates them, that sort of stuff. I dex’s top 10 (“leaders”) outper-
It’s about learning what does and know that sounds touchy feel-y, formed those in the bottom ten
doesn’t work in your technology but it really works.”

Business, Design and Technology // eMag Issue 32 - Sep 2015 11

(“laggards”) on the stock market
by a wide margin.
Similarly, Motiv Strategies
and the Design Management In-
stitute created a Design Value In-
dex, an index of companies they
deem to be design-driven. The
results are similarly stark: 2014’s
index showed that  design-driv-
en companies outperformed the
S&P 500 by 228% over the course
of a decade.
Susan Weinschenk has bril-
liantly laid out the business case
for usability, pointing to a num-
ber of studies encouraging the
use of UX to eliminate waste and Source: Watermark Consulting
save money in the software de-
velopment process. She cites  a
well-known IEEE study  on IT
projects — and IT waste and fail-
ure in particular — and  points
out  that “of the top 12 reasons
that projects fail, three of the top
12 are directly related to what
we would call user experience or
user-centered design work, and
those three are: badly defined
requirements; poor communi-
cation among customers, devel-
opers, and users; and stakehold-
er politics.” And while the figure
she states is from an older study,
Weinschenk highlights a compel-
ling statistic to make the case for Source: Harvard Business Review
usability, including that every $1
invested in user-centered design articles  outlining how poor sys- in the aviation industry for years.
returns between $2 and $100 tem design — specifically, a lack Even Atul Gawande’s best-sell-
(Pressman 1992). of understanding of the hospital ing Checklist Manifesto is largely
Even  the US government care context — led to a 38-fold about the ideas that easily boil
has gotten on board with UX, en- drug overdose, and near death, down to UX: understand the
couraging organizations in gov- of a small boy in a hospital at workflows, processes, and other
ernment and industry to practice UCSF. behaviors of your users in their
user-centered design in the hope Human factors, a field that environments, and design a solu-
of making usable technology a is in many ways the analogue tion they can successfully use in
default. And lest anyone think precursor to the digital era’s UX, that context.
UX is a frivolous or unnecessary has long held a firm position in It’s a basic truth: successful
expense, consider the fields of the design and development of organizations emphasize and
healthcare and air travel — two aircraft. When people argue that invest in UX, integrating it into
industries in which good or bad healthcare should learn  from their teams alongside product
design can quite literally mean the airline industry to  improve and engineering. Can yours af-
life or death. Dr. Robert Wachter patient safety  in hospitals na- ford not to?
recently  published a book  out- tionwide, much of what they’re A common excuse for not
lining the pros and cons of our talking about is the robust sys- doing UX is that the organization
increasingly digital healthcare tem of human factors/UX engi- lacks the resources to make it a
system, and published a series of neering that has been embedded reality: money, time, or expertise,

12 Business, Design and Technology // eMag Issue 32 - Sep 2015


among others. But the above
business cases show that UX is,
or at least should be, a neces-
sity, a given, among organiza-
tions of  any  size. Do you have
a product of some kind? Do
you have customers who use
that product? Then you should
probably have some sort of
UX — whether that’s customer
experience, experience design,
user research, or any other per-
mutation of the name — to
understand both aspects and
their intersection.
Businesses have long
recognized the need for cer-
tain skill sets in order to run a
successful organization — ac-
counting, business analysis,
marketing, product manage-
ment, and engineering for tech
companies — yet UX consis-
tently seems to be left out in
the dark, despite mounting re-
search that it should be placed
in esteem alongside all these
other roles. An estimated  70%
of technology projects fail due
to a lack of user adoption:
shouldn’t you understand your
users and product as much as
possible in order to prevent
this from happening?
Some organizations,
however, are starting to pay
attention — including for-
ward-thinking companies and
graduate programs. CNN Mon-
ey’s 2015 “Best Jobs in America”
listed UX designer at #14 of its
top 100 jobs, and others are be-
ginning to notice a dramatic in-
crease in opportunities for pro-
fessionals in the field with no
signs of slowing, and a growing
number of universities  are of-
fering graduate programs that
lead to UX careers.
Clearly, UX is happen-
ing somewhere.
Finding hidden
opportunity
When many think of UX, they
think of design, slick user inter-
Business, Design and Technology // eMag Issue 32 - Sep 2015
UX isn’t just about design
faces, and maybe usability test-
ing; they think, in other words,
of honing the final design of
an established product. But
the field is much broader than
or about making things
this, and seeks to provide much
more fundamental value than pretty -- it’s about
just those things.
Qualitative research, es-
pecially  interviews  and  eth-
understanding your users
nography, is a lesser-known
venue for gaining user feed- or customers and finding
back that can pay off through-
out the product development
lifecycle. This includes helping
a product / market fit.
organizations to learn what to
build in the first place as they It’s about learning what
discover strategies for product/
market fit, monetization and
user-acquisition models, and
does and doesn’t work
more. Conducting early-stage
ethnography and interviews in your technology or
business processes -- as
can provide a wealth of infor-
mation about customer per-
sonalities, contexts, behaviors,
and wants and needs, and all
of this can help inform future
well as what doesn’t
product decisions around not
only how to design and build even exist yet
something, but what to build
in the first place. - Ted McCarthy
Conducting this kind of
research may sound radical,
but it shouldn’t: Procter & Gam-
ble have been sending manag-
ers and senior leaders out into
the field to conduct “immersion
research” for years. This may in-
clude spending a week or more
living in low-income homes
and shops, and has significant-
ly shaped product direction.
P&G call their program “Living
It” and never refer to the meth-
odologies as UX per se, but
the methods and goals of the
processes are identical: to “get
out of the building” to better
understand users while devel-
oping products intended for
their use.
Similarly, Gregg Bernstein
and his user-research team
at MailChimp have learned
about opportunities for entire-
ly new products as a result of
13
active qualitative research.  Ber-
nstein describes  how the idea
for  MailChimp Snap  came not
from a desire to research a new
product, but rather from a prac-
tice of conducting early-stage ex-
ploratory research: “We research
people and we try to better un-
derstand what would make them
happy, what would fit into their
lifestyle, what would fit into their
day-to-day. We don’t go out with
an idea for a product in mind.”
Qualitative UX research can
provide a great opportunity to
learn more about customers, and
to learn how current and devel-
oping products can be shaped,
modified, or perhaps even in-
vented altogether to fit into their
lives.
Validating findings:
Quantitative
measurement
Qualitative research can and
should be conducted hand-in-
hand with quantitative mea-
surements. Qualitative research
is great at answering questions
like why and how and helps the
researcher learn  what to mea-
sure. Quantitative research,
meanwhile, is able to  do the
measuring of whatever it is that’s
been decided to measure; it is
much better at precisely telling
us what happens when and how
often.
Many researchers advo-
cate for a  mixed-methods ap-
proach  that ties together quali-
tative and quantitative research,
allowing the findings from each
to support those of the other.
When seeking to quantify the
voice of the user — around the
use of a mobile app, for instance
— you can employ a number of
quantitative methods. Examples
follow.
Surveys
While surveys can gather both
qualitative and quantitative data,
they are particularly useful for
14 Business, Design and Technology // eMag Issue 32 - Sep 2015
gaining feedback from relative-
ly large numbers of individuals.
Surveys might ask users about
their use of a product or system,
or some other behavior or details
about user lifestyles that may be
relevant in some other way.
A/B testing
A fundamental aspect of UX,
and of lean/agile methodologies
in general, is the idea of rapidly
testing ideas and then rejecting
them, pivoting, or continuing to
press on with them. A/B testing
allows this to happen in a rela-
tively rigorous, easy manner, and
can provide a lens through which
to view users’ behavior without
needing to ask (and potentially
bias) them.
Usability testing
Usability testing can be both
qualitative and quantitative in
nature but, as with surveys and
A/B testing, generally only oc-
curs once a product has arrived
at some sort of coherent state
in the form of a minimum viable
product (MVP). Once the product
is usable, and its use observed
— even if that use involves, for
instance, low-fidelity paper pro-
totypes — then users can be
tasked with scenarios for working
through a system and observed
from a neutral point of view. Us-
ability tests can be conducted
using prototypes and function-
ing products at all stages of de-
velopment, from lo-fi paper pro-
totypes to interactive prototypes
that can be developed using
a wide array of prototyping tools
to “Wizard of Oz” studies that can
involve manual manipulation of
the prototype to make it feel as
though it’s functional software
to  full software  prototypes  that
can be run and tested as func-
tional software. Usability tests
can be especially helpful for
learning what users expect from
a system, as well as pain points
and opportunities within the ex-
isting product.
And of course, still other,
more exotic UX methodologies
— such as leading users through
a participatory design work-
shop  to facilitate their design of
parts of a product — can add ad-
ditional value as well. The list is
nearly endless.
Bit by bit, the field grows
While this list of UX methods may
seem daunting, they needn’t all
be deployed at once, or even at
all. A major advantage of the way
in which these methods have
been laid out — from qualitative
to quantitative, from relatively
low effort (interviews, obser-
vations, and ethnographies) to
much higher effort (surveys, A/B
tests, and usability tests) — is
that many informational gains
can be obtained early on.
While a variety of methods
for gaining user feedback is ide-
al, even a little is infinitely better
than nothing at all. Individuals
on software-development teams
may often be surprised by how
much they can learn through a
brief conversation with a cus-
tomer or three. Ideally, the seeds
of a UX process lead to small
successes that help UX to grow
— and this growth can lead to
further reinvestment in UX as
the process comes to be seen
as a not only valuable, but even
a necessary set of roles within a
company.
While UX as a profession
is gaining traction as more and
more companies are realizing
the value of design and custom-
er centricity and ever more grad-
uate schools and undergraduate
programs are springing up, it can
be hoped that one day the UX
professional will feel comfortably
at home within any organization.
 Read online on InfoQ

Interview: When Technology

and Design Collide, then Collude

THE INTERVIEWEES
Sam Gibson is a senior technical consultant and software developer at ThoughtWorks in Sydney,
Australia. More than anything, he enjoys helping people and organizations deliver products
that people want through software. Sam has worked across a range of industries and domains,
including several successful startups, financial institutions, media companies, and retail
businesses. His current interests are to accelerate software eating the world. He’s excited about
recent developments that make embedded electronics more accessible and is an enthusiast of
open-source software and hardware. Find him tweeting at @capnkrump.

Ben Melbourne is a digital strategist with ThoughtWorks who helps organizations create
products and services that improve their customers’ lives. His background in user-experience
design provides a passion for a customer-centric approach, along with the research skills
required to drive outside-in thinking. Combining his depth of delivery experience, he knows
how to take an idea and turn it into a product that customers love. Now that he’s gone agile, he
can never go back. Producing pretty design deliverables just doesn’t give the same thrill it used
to now that he has experienced the joy of working in lean, multidisciplinary teams focused on
delivering business value rather than documents. Ben Tweets at @benmelb.

Does design shape technology or does technology shape design?

How do these two disciplines work together and move away from the
traditional siloed approach? In this virtual panel, Sam Gibson and Ben
Melbourne discuss the importance of overcoming friction between
technologists and designers by offering tactical approaches to solving
these common issues. 

Business, Design and Technology // eMag Issue 32 - Sep 2015 15


InfoQ: Does design shape tech-
nology or does technology
shape design?
Ben Melbourne:  The two are
intrinsically interlinked. Both
provide inspiration for the oth-
er. There is an element of truth
that sometimes limitations of
technology can prevent design-
ers from thinking big, but tech-
nology often comes up with
inspiration and new ideas and
approaches that design has nev-
er thought about. The theory is
about incremental innovation
versus disruptive innovation. It
suggests that incremental inno-
vation is  climbing to the top of
the existing hill that you’re stand-
ing on. It’s limited by the size of
that hill. That’s often what a lot of
UX designers focus on. They run
usability testing, trying to tweak
and improve a particular product
and service. But they lose sight of
the fact that there might be oth-
er, bigger mountains out there to
climb.
The two play a key role in
actually challenging and shifting
their perspectives of data disci-
pline.
Sam Gibson: When I think
of design versus development
or design versus technology, I
always think of how science fic-
tion has driven technology to
be invented — really, it’s a lit-
tle bit beyond design but the
idea is this vision, which is part
of design. But the vision is what
drives the technology being in-
vented. Years ago, no one would
have thought of tablets or being
able to call anyone anywhere on
the globe. But that gets driven
forward through that visioning
exercise. Ben, you’re completely
correct. Constraints define how
you do design. That’s true both in
art and in visual design and digi-
tal design.
Without multi-touch
screens, would anyone have de-
16 Business, Design and Technology // eMag Issue 32 - Sep 2015
signed the iPhone or the modern
smartphone interface? Probably
not. Before that technology ex-
isted, there wasn’t this canvas
on which you can draw that…. I
don’t think the two can be sepa-
rated. I don’t think it’s one or the
other at all.
Ben:  I would like to point
out that they’re still not flying
around on hover boards, but
that’s a side point.
Sam: Yes. And we still don’t
have teleporters either.
InfoQ: We’re seeing digital dis-
ruption across most industries,
and certainly the industries
that aren’t yet disrupted will
be soon. How are successful
companies surviving this digi-
tal disruption?
Sam:  The real answer is that
they become software business-
es, that their business becomes
software. It’s funny, actually, if
you talk to the CEO of GE, you
learn that they’ve started this
big initiative where basically
they’re changing over a ton of
their hardware business to be
software, trying to transition to
a 90%-software business in the
next 10 years precisely because
as manufacturing becomes more
commoditized, software be-
comes more and more valuable
because it’s harder to replicate
quality software. It’s harder to do
deep research and development
on technology. Because of that,
you end up with a much stron-
ger business position than you
would otherwise.
You can see it anywhere.
Natural-resource firms are invest-
ing in supercomputing. Wal-Mart
is investing in big data. High-fre-
quency trading is disrupting fi-
nance. You’ve got Skype that’s
the fastest growing telecom;
PayPal that’s disrupting interna-
tional payments. All of these are
making software their core com-
petency and using it to break
down traditional barriers. Unless
incumbents do that, they’re go-
ing to die. Marc Andreessen, the
venture capitalist, talks about
software eating the world and
that’s precisely what that is.
Ben: There’s also an aspect
where the software industry itself
has been maturing and evolv-
ing its approach. In traditional
practices in companies, tech-
nology has been a handbrake. It
stopped businesses from mov-
ing as quickly as they can by slow
release cycles  that  could take
years to get a product out there
and to market it, if at all, whereas
that constraint is starting to shift
with new practices like contin-
uous development and contin-
uous integration. Technology is
no longer the deciding point for
when something should go live.
It’s business that’s deciding when
they want to go live with a partic-
ular product.
InfoQ: So you’re talking about
a growing partnership be-
tween the business and tech-
nology. Ben, what role does
design play here?
Ben:  I often talk about design
as a facilitator rather than just
a designer. Designers and de-
sign-thinking skills allow us to
create a vision and facilitate
that conversation between the
technology and the business
in exploring what’s possible.
You’re coming back to that idea
of whether design or technolo-
gy fuels each other and the con-
straints around them. In reality,
it’s the collaboration between
the technology, design, and busi-
ness. When you have that close
collaboration, you get really ex-
citing and interesting results.
Designers had a key role to
play in facilitating that conver-
sation and using the research
design skills to understand cus-
tomer needs, and to be able to
articulate a vision of what that
would look like or what products
can we provide to support that
need. But it’s not something they
can do by themselves. They need
to take the business and technol-
ogy along for the ride.
Sam:  I think Ben is entire-
ly correct. Design is the channel
through which business needs
are met and technology is the
driver, the engine behind that.
Without design producing actu-
al business results, I don’t think it
matters.
InfoQ: Historically, there has
been a divide between design
and technology. I think we’ve
established that the divide
should not remain, but what
can companies do to encour-
age closer collaboration?
Sam: The divide has traditionally
been designers asking impossi-
bly difficult things of engineers.
The real problem is that the
divide exists and so designers
design in a vacuum, then they
kind of throw the design over
the wall to developers or to the
implementation team who then
implement it in a vacuum. Both
sides are cursing at one anoth-
er. The designer says, “Well, this
isn’t what my vision was when I
thought it up.” And the develop-
ers say, “Well, that doesn’t work
because X, Y, and Z.”
So you end up in a situation
where the design doesn’t span
the chasm. The divide doesn’t
help anyone at all. So bridging
that gap is important to me as a
developer. There’s another thing
where we consider Steve Jobs
the guru of design. He wasn’t a
designer but a business person
driving design, and so design
Business, Design and Technology // eMag Issue 32 - Sep 2015
became the center of the organi-
zation.
I think when you’re an or-
ganization like Apple, that might
be something that you can work
on because design is part of your
DNA. It’s entirely about what
you’re doing. Your product is your
design. But for most organiza-
tions where you don’t have that
as your core pillar, I don’t think it’s
reasonable to do that. The com-
promises need to be made both
on the design side and on the de-
velopment side to start to bridge
that divide at all. Otherwise, it’s
always going to be the same way,
where we’re just throwing things
over the wall.
Ben:  Actually, I don’t think
Apple provides a very good case
study for this kind of conversa-
tion. I think Apple is an unusual
and unique example that I don’t
think many other companies
should be trying to replicate.
Apple provides some great inspi-
ration and that has changed the
industry. But I don’t think many
other people could reach that
same state.
What I would  say is that
everybody has a part to play in
removing that divide. You’ve got
the three main areas: business,
technology, and design. Maybe
that’s being shaped by the classic
Venn diagram of desirability, via-
bility, and feasibility. Ultimately,
that divide exists because each
of those three areas has happi-
ly reinforced it. Designers have
worked in isolation in their ivo-
ry towers. Design agencies are
seen with their headphones on,
throwing documents with ideas
that developers have to try to
build.
Developers haven’t reached
out to try to understand and
take on board design principles
and often have had no interest
customer needs. But there are
simple ways to break down the
division. Designers can  become
embedded parts of delivery
teams and  sit there side by side
to communicate. It’s unnatural to
have the two broken apart. Like-
wise, designers can invite tech-
nologists and business people
into their process as well.
There are other simple
methods that can be adopted
such as taking developers or
product owners along for cus-
tomer research in the field so they
can observe customers firsthand.
Some of these really simple tech-
niques quickly remove that di-
vide when you bring everybody
along for the ride. And likewise,
the business side should bring
technologists and designers into
the conversation before technol-
ogy becomes a solution.
Technologists have a lot of
good input that can help head
off a lot of problems and waste in
the process. By bringing technol-
ogists into that original context
gathering, they can help provide
input and provide both simple
tips that can avoid some of the
resource wastage that takes
place in projects.  Alternatively,
they can provide simple and easy
tools that help inform decision
making. It’s taking everybody
along for that entire journey from
day one that can produce really
simple and innovative results.
InfoQ: What practical advice
would you give practitioners
for building a collaboration en-
vironment?
Sam:  That’s very challenging
question, I think. One of the
things that I — this might be a
bit of a tangent but bear with me
for a moment — admire most
about designers, especially good
designers, is their ability to take
criticism. Part of their job is often
to put something up on a white-
board or a wall and have people
critique the work, and people
who are just not at all qualified
17
 Design and to comment on it in any way.
They’re constantly hammering
on it and chipping away at that.
Technology are It’s sort of a trial by fire for
designers. If you don’t have the
intrinsically tough skin and the ability to
take criticism, internalize it, and
then use that to drive out a bet-
interlinked. Both ter product, you won’t survive
as a designer. Developers are
provide inspiration often the opposite, where they
work very much in isolation, or
the large corpus of what they
for the other work on is in isolation. As time
goes on, the isolation inhibits
- Ben Melbourne you from taking any criticism
whatsoever.
As you bring designers
and developers closer and the
communication starts to flow
more bi-directionally, that will
hopefully start to break down
that inability to kind of look
critically at what it is that we’re
making and end up casting our
product in a different light, so
we’re working toward creat-
ing a better thing rather than
aiming toward our own little
fiefdom. It’s not exactly what
you were saying, but I feel quite
strongly about that. It’s one of
the things I admire most about
designers.
Ben:  I appreciate that. To
be fair, developers do have a
lot of those same practices in
place. I guess that what starts
to matter is culture and practi-
cal activities. Practical activities
and tools tend to build culture.
[But you also want] that culture
of being willing to fail fast. You
have to be willing to put some-
thing up on a wall, test it, and
find out really quickly how ef-
fective it is and whether it actu-
ally meets user needs.
It’s interesting. There are
different practical aspects to
that. I actually had somebody
pull me up recently who said
they don’t really like the term
“failing fast”, which to be fair
does create a lot of anxiety in
people. They actually prefer the
18 Business, Design and Technology // eMag Issue 32 - Sep 2015
term “failing forward” which is a
really subtle shift but it’s about
being willing to try something
and being able to get feedback
from that, but in a way that is
productive and moves you for-
ward as a result. So it’s not just
about failing. It’s  about failing
with a purpose.
Sam:  How many organi-
zations have you worked with,
Ben — especially large enter-
prises — where you think that
they actually accomplished
that? Because in my experi-
ence, often the larger the or-
ganization gets, the more con-
servative it is. And so it’s easy
to say we want to fail fast, but
it’s often hard, given the way
that budgeting works or the
way that projects themselves
are conceived, to ever get to a
point where you can build, say,
lo-fi prototypes of five different
crazy ideas, put them out there,
and then keep only the ones
that work — because you’ve al-
ready invested in this big huge
project. So you almost pay lip
service to failing fast; you’ve al-
ready chosen what the project
is. You do some lo-fi prototypes,
you show them to customers,
and you try to improve on the
product, but you’re never ac-
tually using them to drive in-
novation. Failing fast is simply
something that you use to work
towards the end goal upon
which you’ve already decided.
Ben:  It’s interesting. I
would say it’s not really a con-
versation you can have at the
organizational level but at every
company I’ve ever worked with,
there are examples where I can
say yes and no to both those
questions. And very few orga-
nizations do that consistently
across the board. It tends to be
smaller teams that are able to in
some ways isolate themselves
as a team and provide some
protection so they have a safe
environment in which to finally
start testing it or try new ideas.
But it all very much depends on
the individual team, the product,
and  project they’re working on,
and the timing around it.
What I would say with-
in that, though, is you’re right:
sometimes projects really are
predetermined before people
start working on them. It doesn’t
mean to say you can’t take that
same mindset into every step of
the journey, whether you’re ac-
tually testing the original propo-
sition or concept itself or testing
elements within that product.  It
could be anything from a UI-level
widget all the way back up to the
actual value proposition for the
customers. There is a time and a
place along that journey for test-
ing all of those things. Then you
actually get feedback as you go.
InfoQ: How does the notion of
the user or the customer shift
in an enterprise context?
Ben:  The difference is generally
that customers are a lot easier to
access in startup context where-
as in enterprises, there are a lot
more layers of bureaucracy that
exist between customers and
the people making decisions. A
great contrast is the old-school
mom-and-pop store. The people
running the business have direct
daily contact with the customers
of the business that they can’t
avoid whether they like it or not.
As organizations grow in scale,
suddenly that direct contact be-
comes one step removed, two
steps removed, etc. to the point
where the business decision
makers are completely removed
from the customers and have no
real contact with them.
The key role of UX design is
to bridge that lack of contact and
connection between customers
and decision makers, and to help
Business, Design and Technology // eMag Issue 32 - Sep 2015
people get outside of building
and try to bring some of that out-
side thinking in.
Sam: One of the key things
around enterprise that makes it
more challenging from a UX per-
spective is that enterprise users
are largely a captive audience.
So, generally, it’s much harder to
acquire customers than it is to re-
tain them — particularly in the fi-
nance or insurance sectors where
you have organizations that
have lagged behind technically,
whose customers are generally
used to dealing with crappy soft-
ware and generally don’t mind
dealing with it because the bar-
rier to entry for changing it is so
high. In a lot of ways, it becomes
even harder because even when
you access the customers, it may
still not be enough to make them
shift their behavior or to make
the product better.
One of the things that I
find quite irritating about this is
that in a lot of ways, innovating
within enterprise or doing radical
designs with an enterprise is far
safer than doing it from the point
of view of a startup because a
startup requires that they kind
of keep this hockey stick kind of
growth; otherwise, they’ll die. An
enterprise with its captive audi-
ence knows they’re not going to
leave. It can try something total-
ly off the wall. It may not work,
sure, but they’re not going to see
a huge impact to their business
because of it.
InfoQ: How do you approach
designing software for inter-
nal users in an enterprise com-
pared to designing it for exter-
nal users?
Sam:  Should there be a differ-
ence? Probably not. Is there? Ab-
solutely, because it’s simply that
doing design is expensive and
your internal-facing customers
are a captive audience, literally
— they’re captive!
Ben:  I agree. It’s funny. I
smirked at that question be-
cause it’s one I’ve had so many
times. Fundamentally, it’s a far
more costly experience to de-
sign a bad piece of software for
your customers than for internal
employees simply because cus-
tomers can change companies
and go to a competitor, where-
as you can train employees how
to use a bad piece of software.
19
It’s not to say that there aren’t
efficiencies found in improving
that and making employees’ lives
easier. It’s just that the cost goes
up, but ultimately you can get
around that. In my mind, it’s still a
cost-benefit analysis, but design-
ing and delivering a really crappy
product to market will kill a com-
pany whereas doing that inter-
nally will simply only slow down
your organization and your abili-
ty to deliver things.
Sam:  You’re right, but it
does depend on the context.
If I’m writing some internal
call-center software and it means
a drop in my call-center efficien-
cy by 50% or whatever it is, but
I heavily rely in my business on
the capability of responding to
a customer requests through my
call center, then of course that’s
another matter. But ultimately,
that’s a service for the customer.
So it’s really hard to decide what
do you mean by internal facing
versus external facing because
while that is a piece of software
that only your internal employ-
ees see, it directly affects those
external customers.
Ben:  Having said that, I
would be very, very disappointed
if any UX designer accepts that
as a constraint and doesn’t try to
push the perfect, ideal solution
to the target audience even if it’s
an internal product.
InfoQ: We’re just going to wrap
up with a piece from each of
you. I’ll ask Sam first. Is there
anything at all that just drives
you nuts from the design side
of things or something that
you wish designers wouldn’t
do?  ability to build the best product
Sam:  I actually really like work-
ing with designers because at
the end of the day, I’m not there
to delve into the code and solve
some super-complicated what-
20 Business, Design and Technology // eMag Issue 32 - Sep 2015
ever. I’m there to produce a prod- in a digital world, which pretty
uct that people use and that they much means everyone. So it’s
get enjoyment out of and that’s incumbent upon everybody to
useful for them. Designers have a remove that divide, work togeth-
skill and a skill set and bring a ca- er, and collaborate as closely as
pability to the project that I don’t possible.
have. Without it, I think we would
be less successful.
I don’t actually mind de-
signers railing on the way things
are done, and I don’t mind de-
signers passing up impossibly
hard or extremely difficult things.
I like working with them and pro-
ducing their products.
Ben:    I agree. It always
makes me annoyed when de-
signers don’t enjoy working
with developers, which is crazy.
I would say to that question that
the thing that drives me nuts is
developers who don’t care about
fine details. One or two differenc-
es or that shade of color or just
making a UI just not look as good
as it could drives me nuts. It’s not
because of the actual design de-
tail. It’s about the mindset that’s
behind that: to me, what that
says is the developer doesn’t care
about the quality of the product.
Whether or not they care about
the quality of a codebase or may-
be how reliable it is versus the
why — it’s all part of that.
That quality to me isn’t just
about whether or not there are
bugs in the code and whether or
not things break. It’s about ev-
erything in that production look-
ing as it should. If you don’t care
about some of the constraints
and challenges that technolo-
gists face and some of the work
involved in being able to build
some of these fancy UI elements
that you can come up with and
imagine, then you don’t care
enough for your team and for the
that you possibly could.
Broadly speaking, remov-
ing that divide between design,
technology, and business is the
most important challenge for
any organization that is working
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