Usability and the Organisation - South West Usability Group (SWUG), Bristol
14 December 2004
This session will stand back and take a more strategic view of usability, specifically in the context of web site development.
Building an effective website is often seen exclusively as the job of the web team, and viewed as a design or technical issue. However, often what inhibits an effective web site is the organisation itself - a lack of strategic clarity and user-focused behaviours. Developing an effective web site requires a culture where people at all levels in the organisation adopt behaviours that make a 'good user experience' an important goal. Understanding the user experience, through research methods like usability testing, can be a powerful tool in driving the organisational change needed to develop effective websites.
Dr Sarah Burton-Taylor of the Web Usability Partnership will talk about some instances she has encountered of how the organisation affects usability, and how usability research can affect the organisation, in order to provoke a discussion about how you can increase the strategic importance of usability in your environment.
For further information, times and locations visit the SWUG site at
http://usability.typepad.com/swug/