HCI2005 Feature: Alternative business Models for HCI
The future of the HCI business ...
"Usability News [6] reported that 'The UK market, worth £90m in 2004, will grow by a further 25% in 2005, to between £108m to £117m, driven by increased awareness of the benefits of improved website usability and accessibility'. As well as being a more sophisticated profession, clients are better educated in accessibility and usability and demand higher quality services and added value. This is a positive change from the struggles of advocating UCD in an economic downturn.
Rather than the dogmatic gurus of the past the profession is now made up of a diverse mix of sophisticated and media-savvy experts. It is easy to be complacent about the future in this climate and to forget the lessons of the dotcom crash of a few years ago. At that time, usability professionals struggled in a market that was dominated by cost-cutting. The problem then was that usability had a limited business offering that focused on optimisation. Critics [4] pointed to the commonsensical nature of usability research and its antipathy to design. They pointed to a profession that was dominated by a few vocal usability ‘gurus’ who echoed companies’ fears of risk and spending on research and development. Given the excesses of the boom, this made sense in the short term.
As a long term strategy for sustainability, optimisation has a limited shelf life: once a product or service is optimised the work is finished. In this light, it is worth considering how usability can be integrated with other business processes and services." continued ... (Via Usability News)
"Usability News [6] reported that 'The UK market, worth £90m in 2004, will grow by a further 25% in 2005, to between £108m to £117m, driven by increased awareness of the benefits of improved website usability and accessibility'. As well as being a more sophisticated profession, clients are better educated in accessibility and usability and demand higher quality services and added value. This is a positive change from the struggles of advocating UCD in an economic downturn.
Rather than the dogmatic gurus of the past the profession is now made up of a diverse mix of sophisticated and media-savvy experts. It is easy to be complacent about the future in this climate and to forget the lessons of the dotcom crash of a few years ago. At that time, usability professionals struggled in a market that was dominated by cost-cutting. The problem then was that usability had a limited business offering that focused on optimisation. Critics [4] pointed to the commonsensical nature of usability research and its antipathy to design. They pointed to a profession that was dominated by a few vocal usability ‘gurus’ who echoed companies’ fears of risk and spending on research and development. Given the excesses of the boom, this made sense in the short term.
As a long term strategy for sustainability, optimisation has a limited shelf life: once a product or service is optimised the work is finished. In this light, it is worth considering how usability can be integrated with other business processes and services." continued ... (Via Usability News)
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