Chris Merkel — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 14:36:22 GMT

Good one, Guy! I like the tennis ball ear protection. Similar story…
At firing ranges when a cadet had forgotten to bring ear protection, we would stick spent 9mm cartridges into their ears to dampen the sound of prolonged gunfire. The nice black rings their ears had for a day or two were a good visual reminder to them to bring their issued hearing protection the next day.

Chris Merkel — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 18:40:19 GMT

As a visual designer, I agree with Maria. I’d also like to expand her suggestion to talk about knowledge transfer in how IAs work with other teams throughout a product’s lifecycle. Since we’re picking on people ;-p let’s talk about how UX teams work with software developers to realize a product. Things can go very awry when we run up against impossibilities in time, abilities, or what have you on the engineering side. Sometimes budgets are cut and planned features go out the window. Or, sometimes developers have already created something in an exploratory phase on their own, and they need to be convinced that they aren’t going in the right direction to realize user and business goals. What are best practices for us to follow when working with other teams, manage expectations, and plan ahead/adapt to changing circumstances?

Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Chris Merkel