Scott,

If you grab them by their _______ their hearts and minds will follow.

 I think perhaps a better title might be:
      " On the User Front or I coulda been a contender.....! "

I think your presentation should start off with a slide of Ford's Edsel.
The perfect car, it was long, low, wide, covered in chrome, fins out to
there!
Consumers were "just to stupid to use it." Three plants closed and 20,000
workers lost their jobs.

The points to make to these developers are simple.
1. Developers make tools.
2. People pay for tools to help them provide services and goods to the
market place.
3. If a tool is hard to use, then people will choose another tool, simple as
that.
4. There are lots and lots of tool makers.

I think that it should be bluntly made clear to these developers
that their programming skills are by no means in short supply.

The skill that is in short supply and the skill that developers must
cultivate
for the future is the ability to design-for-use and a cheerful, willing
flexibility to accept nearly constant change in response to customer demand.


Interactions with the user, and a fast flexible response to change are among
the very few things in IT that do not outsource well.

I'd then close with a copy of the Gary Larson cartoon showing three
dinosaurs
laughing at a tiny mammal, as snow begins to fall over their shoulders.

Mark




-----Original Message-----
From: phoenixl [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 2004 1:20 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: User? What User?


Hi,

I've been asked to give a presentation to a group of programmers /
developers who are being resistant to user needs and usability.  The
goal is to get grab their hearts and get them interested in the users.
Statistics aren't going to work here.  I would love hearing any
suggestions or references that I could include.

I'm toying around with a couple of titles for the presentation.  One is:

    User?  What user?

The other is:

    That Virus on The Other Side of the Screen  -  Also Known as the User

Thanks,
Scott


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