UK UPA Client Panel demands User-Centred Services

People and their ability to communicate are the most important factors in choosing an agency to work with on usability studies suggested the four panellists at the UK UPA session on "What clients want from usability professionals".

Coming as a surprise to many, who believed financial arguments and expertise would figure higher in clients' expectations of a good team, the panellists clearly favoured employing consultants with whom they felt they could work well over the longer term, building knowledge about ways of working, and developing trust.

The four clients giving their opinions in answer to questions from the audience: Alan Colville, product manager at Telewest; David Followell, usability manager for the Nationwide Building Society; Juliet Blackburn, head of digital media at AAR Group and Sarah Herman, e-communications specialist for the Central Office of Information represented a wide variety of approaches and organisations. The Nationwide is owned by its members, the COI is public sector. AAR acts as an intermediary bringing companies and agencies together, while Telewest brought a company perspective. (The picture shows Herman, Mark Hicks of Sapient who was chairing the panel, Blackburn and Colville from left to right.)

Nonetheless, despite individual differences in set-up, priorities and ways of working, a common core of values quickly emerged about choosing and keeping external relationships with usability professionals.

'People are buying people supported by the organisation's philosophy,' said Blackburn. 'Casting is important, as is attention to detail. You don't want salespeople at the [pitching] meeting. The moment the client walks through the door the chemistry starts...'

And Colville added that Telewest will informally visit potential agencies to see how they operate in judging to whom to give a contract.

'We have three organisations we use: why change? It's a risk to move. And they have become educated in financial services,' said Followell.

Mistakes that consultants make included ignoring many aspects of user-centred design.

'We are a large company with a detailed development process and usability companies need to come in and work round it. That doesn't always happen. It's hard because usability companies are expected to be good, to know their audience,' said Colville.

Harman said that reports came back from companies so high level as to be platitudinous and so low level as to be too specific in their recommendations. Reports needed to vary to meet the client organisation's needs, said the participants: a presentation summary for the senior management, a detailed account for the developing team, and bad news presented as gently as possible. One person talked in horror of a research feedback meeting that lasted two hours.

When asked about return on investment (ROI) arguments for using usability services, panellists were cautious. Colville commented that setting up a ROI argument could leave usability as the fall-guy when targets were not met. His company favoured measuring customer satisfaction. Followell said that his team had recently introduced a process of asking their internal clients to estimate the value that usability had added – the merit of this approach was still being evaluated, but clients were 'putting bigger figures on it than we would dare'.

The four agreed that at the moment fees were falling, but none identified cost only as the determining factor in recruiting usability support. Expertise needed to be evident but not to dominate over a responsive and flexible approach.

As well as running this panel, the UK UPA is also working to produce a guide for clients, supporting them in deciding how to choose usability professionals to work with.

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