Customer Reviews

Selling Usability: User Experience Infiltration Tactics

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Selling usability promises to teach you tactics to infiltrate usability into your organization. By means of 41 short chapters, including an abstract and a wrap-up, it tries to deliver these lessons to you.

Indeed, there are some nice tips and tricks for making people aware of the importance and ROI of usability (but non of these are lessons you can't find in any 'how to boost your career' manual). However, the 41 chapters Rhodes wrote are actually variations on a few lessons that he has to share. Imagine you are a colleague you are trying to convince and look at the issue from his point of view, it's all about the money and people other than you don't care about UX as much as you do are some prime examples which are repeated over and over, but in different wording. As a result, the book failed to hold my attention after a few chapters.

Another thing that I really disliked about the book is Rhodes' writing style. Every few sentences he tries to put in a one-liner or confidence booster. Really, I can't hear the phrases 'let's make some UX magic happen' and 'let's sprinkle some UX magic dust' anymore. I'm a person who is serious in his job, I don't need this kind of encouragement. Finally, the book is full of spelling mistakes and typos. And as the book progresses they increase. Like Rhodes needed to finish the book in a hurry. The least you can do after you have written a book is getting it spell-checked.

In all, the book has a few interesting lessons, but when you read it you have the feeling that some kind of self-proclaimed guru with ADHD is trying to convince you what to do.

The book is about selling user experience, not from the top down (ie. convincing your CEO), but from the bottom up, which is how 99% of us have to sell it. It's funny, it's brilliant, if I could write like that I'd be writing my next book today. I love it.

If you're doing UX work in a large organization, you should buy this book. And if you're a UX consultant, you should too. It's that simple. The book is worth it's weight in gold: it gives you (as a UX person) insight in how to really get things done in large companies.

The first chapter starts off good (and I'm gonna put a lot of quotes in this review to give you an idea of the writing style and wisdom in the book):

"99% of the people in an organization are not thinking about UX and the other 1 % are thinking about women, fire and dangerous things. Most managers understand UX about as well as they understand the average airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow."

A wakeup call, but true. It's a practical book, can't emphasize this enough:

"This book is full of stealth. We've got guerilla attacks, end runs, and cloaking devices. These tactics are not conventional. I'm asking you to reject the frontal assault. We'll be successful under the radar."

In "2. The First Business of Business is Business", he explains what business is all about.

"How Do You Talk About UX? The advice I am going to give you next is worth the price of the book: Do not talk about user experience for at least a month. Instead, before you say or do anything regarding UX, think about what it means to the bottom line. Modify your language to be more in line with the true intentions of the business."

Chapter 3: User Experience is an Ugly Baby

I didn't know Donald Norman used the term "user experience" in 1998 and 1999.

Again, John puts his finger right on the problem:

"Most folks involved in UX do not have business or management experience. This means that few people can bridge the gap between the two worlds. There isn't a common language available. This leaves UX at a disadvantage."

In chapter 4: Understanding Your Role in the (Dis)Organization, he explains how companies *really* work. Forget about the org chart.

"Managers hate risk; they love people who can reduce it. In business, there's nothing so valuable as a sure thing. Put that idea in your pocket and never let it go."

In the following chapters, John explains how to deal with managers, co-workers, designers, sales, CEOs and executives, teams, stakeholders and consultants. One chapter each. This part of the book is pure gold: for every group, John clearly explains how they think (and this is true in almost all organizations), and even more importantly, how to influence them).

More good quotes:

"A consultant has power nearly equal that of a customer. There isn't quite as much juice flowing, but it can be pretty damn close, especially since your organization is probably paying this person hefty sums of cabbage."

"I like almost all designers and developers. The reason is pretty simple. Unlike so many workers, these men and women get real work done. "

"Sales people talk. They talk to a lot of people and they talk all the time, mostly to product managers, marketing, and of course customers. Although unusually biased, these workers have an exceptional grasp of what your company has to offer and what your customers want and need."

By the time we get to chapter 14, it's back to you. How to use project momentum to your advantage. Here's the first sentence of this chapter: "All projects are headed in some direction. You want to understand the vector of activity and inject UX along the way." Damn good stuff.

Now go buy this book.

I've only read half of the book this far, but I am wildly enthusiastic, so I'm going to go ahead and post this review right now. Buy this book. Order it for everyone in your consulting company. Really. It's almost at the level of "Don't make me think", which I think is the best book about usability ever written. And I only say "almost" coz it lacks the funky illustrations. Go order it! If you're disappointed you can email me personally.

This book is both great and not worth the buy. It truly has some great points, they are not new, but they are true and well-written. The point are more or less: Know your recievers language, priorities and culture. Speak their language, use their methods, insert your UX knowledge, skill and results into their work. Get them to speak your cause. And so on.

After reading half the book, I got bored. It seem to repeat the same message again and again, just adjusted to different team members and subjects. I felt like ripping the first quarter of the book of for the bookshelf and trash the rest.

So, there a dilemma about this book. The points are great, but they can't carry the whole book. After while you get inchi fingers because you want to go furtherm, deeper into this. But there are only few examples, merely anecdotes. Its almost fictional, like a good story.

Its also a little narrowminded (for me personally), because it keeps downplaying evangelizing or trying to get others to evangelize - in the sence that "they are bigger, been there longer, have more power or higher priorities". This might be true - especially since the writer is very experience in this field - but I can't help but feeling like its either a very personal style or a little hesitant.

All in all. By the book, if you don't feel like nowing this kind of stuff already. But as a UX professional (like me) you might be dissapointet, because of the lack of more hands-on advice. (Still, the man i right you know...)

When I went back into the usability field full-time, John Rhodes was one of the first bloggers I discovered. I honestly didn't know who he was at the time or what company he worked for, but his content kept me coming back. "Selling Usability" reminds me of that great content that first drew me to John's work - it's not only direct and down-to-earth, but it's advice that you can put into practice in your UX work immediately.

Selling Usability is for anyone doing usability/UX in the corporate world; anyone who has to deal with the reality of corporate politics, heirarchies, and budgets. Instead of trying to take on the world and make a frontal assault, John shows you how to work within your organization's structure and culture to sell usability from the inside. He explains in clear terms how to talk to managers, salespeople, designers, and consultants in their own language and ultimately get them to sell usability within your organization for you.

Although the book's subtitle ("User Experience Infiltration Tactics") may seem a little in your face, these tactics are all about understanding your organization and working effectively within it. We UX folks can sometimes get a bit caught up in an ivory tower mentality, and that idealism, while well-intentioned, gets in the way of real change and can put our coworkers off of usability and its benefits. John shows you how to step down from the ivory tower, build the case for usability from the inside, and ultimately be a better practitioner while helping your career in the process.

I had high hopes for this book, especially after reading the good reviews, but it really disappointed me. Here's why:

1. Most chapters have vague names that don't describe what their about. Names like "Sexy Designs Cloak The Ivory Tower and Dirty Research", "You Have Mad Skillz, Apply Them", "Why Take The Test When You Can Take The Train" and so on. I'm not sure if they're supposed to reference anything, but you'd assume that about on usability would at least have descriptive chapter names.

2. Mentioning chapters, it's unprofessional how the names of the chapters in the table of contents doesn't match their actual names. For example, chapter 15 is shown as "Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Quality Club", but the first page of that chapter shows that its name is "Getting into the Quality Clubhouse". It's amazing how no one noticed this before publishing the book.

3. The author's sense of humor is average at best, yet never misses a chance to try to be witty. It made me feel uncomfortable since the humor most of the time seems over the top, unnecessary and not funny at all.

4. Most of the advice in the book is either obvious or generic. The chapters are also very short and repetitive to the point that chapter summaries have all what you need to read most of the time.

I'd only recommend you this book if you were ABSOLUTELY clueless about how to sell usability. Otherwise, don't waste your money on it. It's not worth your time.

What do Niccolò Machiavelli and Mother Teresa have in common? They'd both be proud of John Rhodes for writing this book. Selling Usability is a delightfully sneaky guide to making the world a better place. It's a "must read" for all user experience strategy and design folks within large organizations. And, it's a lot of fun too!

This book is excellent - insightful, relevant and most specifically written in a way that demonstrates lots of personal experience and success from thinking strategically. In fact, while reading -- it felt like John actually had first hand knowledge of the challenges I face in my current role. His approach to gaining buy-in is both practical and logical.

I value the end of chapter summaries - which enables you to refer to specific tactics and quickly. The chapter titles also make this book very scannable and easy to read.

Well done - I highly recommend reading!

You know the difference User Experience can make to your company. You've read about the different kind of usability testing methods like heuristic evaluation or user testing and you've learned the tremendous return on investment it can deliver.

You are ready to go but there is only one minor problem.

How to convince your boss? How to convince the marketing department? How to convince product managers? How to convince developers? How to convince designers? In other words how to get your company feeling as passionate about User Experience as you are?

Selling Usability will provide you with all the answers you need. The book is highly practical and will offer many tips which you can put into practice immediatly. The chapters are witty, comprehensive and concise.

In his paper 'Stimulating Change Through Usability Testing' Joseph Dumas writes "As a person responsible for usability testing, you have the opportunity to become a change agent in your organization or in the organization you are conducting the test for. Your influence can go beyond improving the individual products you test for usability"

Selling Usability will help you master the tactics of leading that change. A must read for everybody working on implementing usability.

I meet a lot of passionate people in the UX field. Many however, feel they aren't making enough of a difference, because others 'don't get it'.

This book shows you how to sell usability in your organisation and/or your clients. It contains practical approach to convince people of the benefits of usability research. It teaches you how to communicate in the language of business and corporate politics and be effective.

John's book is like the 'Don't make me think' for selling usability. I recommend all UX professionals read it.

My friend recommended this book, and I think this book is very useful to me..
But.. What I received was starting 19PAGE!! My book missed 1page~18page. Where are the pages?
I don't live in US. And it's very difficult to exchange book for foreigners.
It's my first purchase in Amazon. So I am disappointed a little..
But this book is very good for UX designer. I recommended this book to my coworkers, too.