CUA of the Month – May, 2012

Keeping it simple

by Sheldon Kreger

Many large companies have been using internet tools for many years. These systems support both the internal dynamics of an organization and also serve as an interface for their clients. As the importance of the internet continues to grow, there are many changes in the technology which can serve to improve these digital systems. As these developments unfold, Chevron Corporation has prioritized user experience within their intranets and web sites. Steve Gillette - our CUA of the Month - has played an important role in putting the user in center-stage.

Chevron is a global company. Steve says, “Over the past two years, usability has received much more attention and sponsorship from senior management. I am now part of a group that is focused on delivering best practices in usability to the entire IT function.”

Although there is a significant amount of executive championship to create a mature usability practice at Chevron, there are many challenges. The Usability Team is responsible for directly consulting on individual projects and to facilitate creation of a UX culture across the company.

“My main focus is to get the word out about usability across the organization. I was part of the first set of CUAs at Chevron in 2006. Back then, it was just a focus for a few of us. As the years passed, we have built a more focused UX team and have simultaneously assisted many design teams in integrating user experience concepts into their work.”

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“One of the significant challenges is to identify the projects which need focused UX work early on in their life cycle. When we get involved early on, we consistently save time and money - not to mention that we have better results overall on these projects. This is why Chevron is continuing to expand its usability practice.”

Steve and his teammates have developed a focused approach to spreading awareness about usability across the company. Because people are busy with other aspects of their jobs and project work, it’s important to show that usability is not additional work but a way of doing the work in an more structured and efficient manner while significantly increasing the probability that the delivered solution will be embraced by the end-users on delivery.

“One of the most effective ways we have found to promote usability practices within Chevron is to keep things simple. By teaching others that usability can be fun, relatively easy, and rewarding, they are more likely to use the techniques we teach them. If you tell people that they have to formally test twenty users, hire additional staff, and spend a lot of money, they are far less likely to actually utilize the knowledge we pass along. By keeping things simple, we can create a widespread awareness of usability within Chevron and also see immediate improvements in project quality.”

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Keeping it simple ... (Continued)

Of course, with so many different usability problems to confront, Steve is always learning new skills. Although there is much to be absorbed through his work experiences, Steve takes time to study user experience as a competency in itself. By broadening his knowledge, Steve is able to work more effectively with his team members and leverage partnerships and learning opportunities within the UX community.

“I listen to podcasts and attend virtual seminars. There are plenty of great books on user experience, as well. I can learn a lot about user experience testing and simplification of the processes we use at Chevron. I also enjoy attending conferences and other UX events. In the end, the goal is to find ways to save time and do things more effectively.”

Regardless of the technical and logistical challenges we face, Steve reminds us that it’s the end-user who is really important.

“Testing real users is always of utmost importance. That is our key message to any project team – test with a real user in their work environment. It’s impossible to get a strong idea of how an end-user will use an interface by working only with designers and technical people. I’m looking forward to doing much more of that - seeing how people do their work and what kinds of solutions we can create to make their work more efficient, effective, easy to learn, easy to remember, and error tolerant, enabling a satisfying user experience.”

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