The Usability Team: Usability Mentoring

Remote Usability Mentoring

So, your company has gotten the message about usability. Perhaps you’ve added "user experience" responsibilities to two of your UI developers’ performance plans. Or you’ve assigned one of your technical sales staff to collect some user data. Maybe you've even devoted headcount to a new hire with a degree from a usability-related discipline.

But you wonder, will your usability effort be world-class? Will it be worth the investment? And -- a different question -- how will you know if it is or is not?

Your software developers, QA testers, and marketing staff all have qualified managers. In fact, they probably also have senior managers, directors, and VPs to lead and evaluate their efforts.

For your usability staff, you could hire a senior usability professional, but at a fully-burdened salary of maybe $175,000, um, well, you’ve gotten the message about usability, but maybe it’s a bit early to drink the Kool-aid.

Here’s another option: Remote Mentoring services from The Usability Team. For a fraction of that fully-burdened salary, you can get your budding usability team the benefit of ongoing guidance from an experienced, talented, and educated usability professional. Consider hiring a principal from The Usability Team to help your team mature more quickly and make fewer errors along the way.

Mentoring services from The Usability Team are available in three different levels and are priced in two tiers: teams of three or less and teams of 4 to 8. If your team has more than eight members, please contact us.

Silver

Gold

Platinum

Access for your entire team to the password-protected section of our website containing over a dozen white papers on pragmatic aspects of usability practice (with at least one new white paper per month). (Oh, and we take requests -- let’s decide what tailored white paper would help your team the most.)

Reviews and edits of all test plans and test reports.

Template documents for your team to adopt, as they build their library of resources.

24-hour (and likely four-hour) turn-around on all usability questions.

One on-line training module per month, on the topic of our (yours and our) choosing.

All Silver Level services, plus:

Telephonic participation in team meetings (up to weekly).

Real-time remote monitoring of your team’s usability testing, with feedback on technique.

One expert review of some user interface, to be completed in parallel with your team’s review, to allow them to compare findings.

All Gold Level services, plus:

At least one in-person visit per quarter.

Remote usability mentoring services from The Usability Team.

Usability isn’t rocket science, but it isn’t just common sense either.

A new usability team requires thoughtful, practiced caretaking.

You can't expect novice practitioners to succeed in an enterprise environment without the benefit of experienced guidance. We can help you grow your newly established usability team into a confident, fully-functioning component of your software development effort.