“Paradoxically, when we advocate for the user within our product or service development teams, we are, in effect, simultaneously advocating for the team to our users.” – Michael Cummings
Quote submitted by the author, Michael Cummings. Do you have a quote you want to see on inspireUX? Submit it, and it may be chosen! I’m running a little low on quotes to post, so the more submissions the better! Thanks for your continued support.
“User experience is the center of gravity of a project that pulls the necessary fragments of various design principles and disciplines together giving the finished product that shine, that glow, that luster, that compels and attracts.” – Angel R. Marquez
This quote was submitted by the author, Angel R. Marquez. This quote is also part of an IxDA discussion topic.
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![“The members of [cross-functional] teams have to listen carefully to the language used by the other team members, thoughtfully present their own work in terms that the others can understand and over time build enough trust and understanding of one another that they can value, integrate and leverage one another’s expertise... Just as you might do in preparing yourself to visit another country or another culture, design and business leaders must take the time to understand a bit about the place they are visiting—a little of the language, the customs, the ways of thinking.” - Sara Beckman](http://www.inspireux.com/wp-content/uploads/163-300x200.gif "“The members of [cross-functional] teams have to listen carefully to the language used by the other team members, thoughtfully present their own work in terms that the others can understand and over time build enough trust and understanding of one another that they can value, integrate and leverage one another’s expertise... Just as you might do in preparing yourself to visit another country or another culture, design and business leaders must take the time to understand a bit about the place they are visiting—a little of the language, the customs, the ways of thinking.” - Sara Beckman")
“The members of [cross-functional] teams have to listen carefully to the language used by the other team members, thoughtfully present their own work in terms that the others can understand and over time build enough trust and understanding of one another that they can value, integrate and leverage one another’s expertise… Just as you might do in preparing yourself to visit another country or another culture, design and business leaders must take the time to understand a bit about the place they are visiting—a little of the language, the customs, the ways of thinking.” – Sara Beckman
Read Kate Rutter’s interview with Sara Beckman entitled “Strategic Numbers: Discussing the Value of Design” for more of Sara’s thoughts on how design drives business value. Sara clearly expresses the need for design and business team members to work together and understand each other as part of cross-functional teams.
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“To be truly great, we have to understand the motivation of our clients, maintain constant two-way communication with shockingly uncreative people, get a firm handle on copywriting and how that craft exists symbiotically with the visual element, and foresee how the finished whole will be greater than the sum of the bits and pieces we spent hours obsessing over. All of these factors cascade into the final product.” – Kevin Potts
Read Kevin’s article “The Details That Matter” for his thoughts on how successful designers think critically and analytically about the details of a project.
“UX suffers when we wall ourselves off from the rest of the organization. Getting people from other disciplines involved gives them the opportunity to feel that you’re all working toward a common goal. At the same time, it gives you the opportunity to advocate user-centered thinking and gain that critical buy-in.” – John Ferrara
Read more from John and other UX professionals on the topic of “Evangelizing UX Across an Entire Organization” in the UXmatters article by Janet M. Six.
(It’s about time I quoted a fellow Vanguard Information Architect )
“What UX designers offer that’s special is help building a vision for what the product can and should be. This is not a reductive ‘getting things done’ approach. It’s a generative ‘what does this have the potential to be’ kind of approach. A good UX designer should encourage the team to ask that question, facilitate a process that brings the whole team along in answering it, and then make those answers tangible, doable, and, yes, a little bit pretty.” – Leah Buley
Read Leah’s article “Burndowns and Flareups in Agile Design” here.
Catriona Cornett
