Donna Fitzgerald
Research Director
3 years at Gartner
31 years IT industry
Donna Fitzgerald is the role service director for the Program and Portfolio research area. Her responsibilities include helping companies improve their program and portfolio management capabilities. Ms. Fitzgerald uses her personal experience… Read Full Bio
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by Donna Fitzgerald | August 6, 2009 | Comments Off
What makes for a good user experience? I recently had the oppotunity to stay in two different hotels that each cost the same BUT with very different experiences. In the first hotel there was someone at the desk to check me in when I arrived. At the second there was no one which seemed a tad unreasonable to me since it was only 7:30 pm. It took 15 minutes for someone to arrive. At the first hotel I walked into my room and said whoa. It was everything a hotel room should be; comfortable, convienent, and stylish. I walked into the second hotel room and immediately sent a note to my admin that if Travel ever put me into this over priced hovel again I’d start refusing to travel. Dramatic reponse? yes. Over the top? I actually don’t think so. In a tight economy there is absolutely no reason to spend money for poor quality and an uncomfortable place to lay one’s head.
The point to this rather rambling story is how often do we deliver software systems that are just as poorly designed as the second hotel. Yes they have a bed, a bath and even an “easy chair” (all carefully listed in the requirements document), but the bed is lumpy, the bath is too small and the easy chair is stuck in a place where it’s effectively useless. Add on to this biege walls, beige pictures and the equivalent of terrible lighting (read bad to non-existent reporting) and I think you get the picture. To make matters worse — I’m guessing that the cost difference between good UX and bad UX is nothing more than the time it takes to make the commitment to understand what good UX actually is.
So why should you, my stalwart reader, care? After all there are UX professionals out there who specialize in this and you really would hire them if you had the budget. My answer is that for a few dollars invested in some books and a few hours of your time spent reading them you can learn enough to ensure that usability isn’t completely overlooked.
Category: PMO Tags: UI, User Experience
