Introducing HCI into an Organization: Making a Convincing Case for Usability

1 Extended Abstract The influence of a usability team in a particular organization and its products depends partly on the organizational structure and culture and partly on the skill set in the usability team itself. Once management decides to embrace usability, the integration of a usability team should therefore be considered very carefully in light of the existing organizational structure and culture [1,5] without, of course, neglecting consideration of the skills required to ensure the long-term benefits of usability to the organization's products. Strategically, the three most typical usability funding models found in organizations are (a) the core corporate model, (b) a 'taxation' system, or (c) a project-by-project model. In the core corporate funding model, management has recognized the benefits and value of HCI, and the services of the usability team are freely available for project teams. In such cases, the success of the usability team of enhancing the organization's products depends partly on the degree to which usability is integrated into the organization's product development procedures and partly on the ability of the team to deliver useful and usable results in a timely fashion. To the extent that usability is already integrated into the development process and thus presumably accepted especially by development and marketing, the usability team can concentrate entirely on providing services as defined in the development process. If, however, usability is not already firmly integrated into the development process, tension is likely to exist between usability-and project teams. In that case, usability team members typically play the dual role of constantly advocating, or 'selling', the benefits of usability to each project in a piecemeal bottom-up manner as well as delivering actual usability services. These teams are often forced to identify opportunities for collecting data with which to demonstrate the value of usability. Teams funded corporately are the least vulnerable as long as organizational restructure does not force them into either a 'taxation' model or a project-by-project model of funding. In the 'taxation' system model the usability team is not funded corporately. Instead, each department pays a 'tax', a levy that contributes to the team's existence. To the extent that usability is well integrated into the organization's development process, this model can work well since the paying departments have already