User Experience for a Better World

What changes are you facing in your UCD Groups / design initiatives as a result of slowdown ?

In all my recent discussions with clients, friends in the community, industries and in various design groups, we are chating about aftermath of slowdown and how its affecting them personally or their UCD groups.

What changes / additions / modifications in your design group / plans / projects / training are you facing in your organizations ?

Is your mgmt asking you to embark on any new activities, research, newer projects because of slow down in the market ? Which ones..

Are they merging UCD Groups with other groups and if so which ones and what is the new agenda / mission of this new group ?

Pls share your thoughts, comments, articles...

Tags: Recession, Slowdown, UCD, changes

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Permalink Reply by Junaid A on March 17, 2009 at 4:32pm

I had posted a similar reply to a different thread on HFI connect (How is your UX team structured?) but I thought that what I had posted there was relevant to this discussion too..

We are an interactive marketing agency (www.ideaii.com) and our User Experience team here (about 5 of us) recently merged with the Marketing Analytics team. Since we are involved in most of the secondary research and gathering requirements to determine approaches to solving problems clients come to us for, we now are the 'Strategy Team'. We obtain inputs from and provide the necessary direction on approach and expectations to Creative and the Site Building teams.

Since every individual in our team has a set of specific skills and has a fairly good idea of where he wants to get to, we are in the process of defining specific roles and job titles matching it.

We are still slammed with work, there are a lot of unknowns on where we are heading next, but we are excited about this initiative from the leadership in our organization.