Planning a User Experience Project

The Usability people like to begin planning UX projects with a client"kick-off" meeting.

This meeting is a strategic event for introducing stakeholders to each other, gaining commitment to usability and defining usability objectives based on business objectives. It is also a method for collecting information about the purpose of the system and its overall context of use from domain and technical experts.

Many times it is important to justify resources for User-Centered Design (UCD) and project-wide usability activities and establish the key metrics for the measurement of our success.

Those responsible for planning a project should assess the relative importance of usability taking account of:

• How important is usability to ensuring that the project meets the needs of the success-critical stakeholders?
• What risks could arise from poor usability (e.g. not achieving a required level of usability, low level of adoption of a web service, poorer usability than competitive products, other financial consequences, safety risks)? (According to ISO-9241-210: Human-centred design for interactive systems)

Content of a plan for UX Project:

• Identify appropriate methods and resources for the User Experience project.
• Define procedures for integrating User Experience activities and their outputs with other system development activities.
• Identify the range of skills and viewpoints in the organization that can contribute to the User Experience.
• Establish procedures for feedback and communication between User Experience activities and other design activities.
• Establish success metrics, to ensure ROI for the User Experience project.
• Integrate appropriate milestones for User Experience into the overall design and development process.
• Ensure that the plan provides time for iteration, and the implementation of any changes resulting from evaluation.

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