I entered the PC software business in 1983 because of leverage.  Understand a market, find a problem, design a solution, implement it well, market it with a clear message and you can sell to many customers at low incremental cost.

User experience plays an important role in this leverage. When we talk with customers, we want it to be about understanding their environment and problems, and listening to what they think about our solutions. We aim to minimize other one on one conversations. We want to spend the rest of our time producing software and one-to-many messages (web pages, e-mail, webinars, videos, social media, …). When we succeed, we save time for customers and us. The customer learns most of what they want from our web site and their evaluation of our software, which is fluid and intuitive. Conversations with our sales staff are consultative and brief because the customer already has the basic information they need. Technical questions are rare because the software is intuitive and well written.

User experience is a hot topic, with good reason. My concern is that too much of it is talk, and it is too often not a real priority, as measured by the resources and attention given it by senior management. Is it a major part of the design effort? Along the development path, is it reviewed iteratively? Will a release be delayed or stopped because the user experience isn’t good enough?

We have some of this culture and want more.