Learning to be an effective user experience consultant or contractor is a challenge. Most of us learn through experience and from watching colleagues. It’s hard to find advice that applies to our everyday experience working with and for clients — at least it was for me. I did, however, come across one book with one guideline that has been consistently valuable.
The book is
Managing The Professional Service Firm by David Maister. The guideline is to ask yourself every day, or at least every week, “What can I do for my client today?” It does not mean looking in the Statement of Work to see what the next deliverable is. Doing what you are contracted to do well is necessary but not sufficient to be effective. It’s the extras you provide that make you special as a consultant.
For example, I am sitting in the usability lab in the early morning with an hour before my first session of the day. What can I do for my client today? Three ideas come to mind:
- My client has expressed the desire to have his manager sit in on a test session “when the time is right.” Let’s find out if he is free now and do it today.
- It’s a long time from when we planned this test until the report is due. What if I create a brief weekly summary of events and email it to him on Fridays?
- Yesterday afternoon’s test participant had a particularly insightful suggestion about the design of a task flow we have been working on. Instead of waiting for the report or just telling my client about it, how about if I create PowerPoint slide and attach a few seconds of the recording to it? That way my client can easily pass it on to his boss to set the stage for what we will recommend later in our report.
None of these ideas would be a burden to implement, but they would add value to my work, value that my client can see. You might argue that these three ideas are what a good consultant should be doing anyway. Well, that is my point.
Whenever I ask this question of myself, the answers are always immediate, useful, and easily done. Give it a try.
