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Choosing the right vendor
Here are some questions you may want to ask to make sure you find the right UX vendor to support your mature UX practice.
Staff augmentation
Does the vendor have enough people?
Just now you might need a few people. But we often see that initial number grow as your team grows in its reputation and influence. Will your vendor be able to provide the number of people you really need? Has the vendor provided 20 people to one operation? How about 30 or 50 or 100?
Can the vendor adapt to your optimal geographic footprint?
You will need people onsite (full time or at least part of the time). You can control costs by having remote staff (in your time zone, or even saving more in remote time zones). Can the vendor adapt to your needs to find the best solution in terms of quality, convenience, and cost?
Is there a consistent level of high quality training and certification?
A vendor can try to recruit staff to match some criteria. And you might get a few staff with some useful skills. But only a solid training program can provide a scalable team of people with a reliable skill set. Do the practitioners have a foundation in core UX concepts? Do they have skills in the tasks you need now, and might need in the future? Can they do expert reviews, usability tests, detailed design, etc.? And how will you know that they really have the background claimed? Do they have testing or certification?
Does the vendor provide ongoing mentoring, training, and personnel management?
Providing initial training is great. But development and maintenance of practitioners means an ongoing growth path. They need continuing training and mentoring or they will get stale and leave. And they need management of their career plan and tactical needs. Does the vendor have an ongoing development process against a model of practitioner competency?
Will the staff work well in a mature practice, following your methods and standards?
Recruiting ad hoc people will likely get a set of practitioners that are used to working as freelancers. They will not be tuned to working in a mature operation. Will your vendor have staff that are aligned with the use of methods, UI standards, and industrial strength tools?
Can the vendor manage turnover and any quality issues?
If you have a few UX practitioners you might get through a year without turnover or quality issues. If you have 50 people or more, a bit of trouble is just routine. Does you vendor have practices for handling turnover and quality issues? Will they handle replacement of a person who leaves, or gets sick? Will they be there if the quality of work starts to fall apart?
Can the vendor provide high level design and management support?
In some cases you will want to have full high level control of every project personally, or with your internal managers. But you may also want to have your vendor supplement their staff with high level experts, specialists, and project managers. You might need a cross cultural designer, or persuasion engineer to supplement the generalist UX practitioners. You might need a very senior designer who can manage cross channel strategy, innovation programs, or very complex applications.
Enterprise UX tool
Does the vendor provide an enterprise framework that makes UX work easier?
Mature UX work requires an enterprise infrastructure that lets you use an integrated set of methods, templates, standards, wireframing tools, ecosystem objects (users, environments, scenarios, artifacts), and maintain an accessible record of projects and designs. Mature UX work is only easier if you can leverage all that your UX team knows, as opposed to working in little UX silos. Can your vendor solve this massive enterprise UX issue?
Training and certification
Does the vendor provide a complete and seamless training solution?
Does the vendor have a complete and seamless professional level training program for UX professionals? Do the courses use a consistent set of terms and concepts? Do they reflect global best UX practices? And in addition to professional training, is there training that can be used to promote your UX practice within your organizational culture?
Does the vendor have the capacity to teach the number of courses you need and handle the geography?
You may need many courses and you may need courses presented around the world. Can the vendor handle this, over time, with reliability, consistent quality, consistent content, and limited travel costs?
Does the vendor provide training in advanced UX skills?
Fundamental skills in usability are critical. But does the vendor offer more advanced training? Can they cover UX strategy, user-centered innovation, persuasion engineering, mobile devices? Your operation will usually need the advanced content eventually.
Does the vendor provide a way to validate accomplishment?
You might have people who you think already understand UX fundamentals. It makes sense to test them to make sure that the skills and knowledge are in place. It also makes sense to validate all your practitioners, to ensure that their training has been absorbed. Does the vendor have a certification program or test to ensure that you are deploying the capabilities that are needed by your organization?
General
Does the vendor help build your company's UX infrastructure?
Many UX vendors are intent on just doing the projects. They don’t focus on helping internal staff to learn UX skills or building a UX infrastructure for their clients. Some even try to hide their practices. Get a vendor who is on your side in building internal knowledge and capabilities. Get a vendor who will work itself out of a job.
Is the vendor easy to do business with?
It is important to have a vendor that is easy to do business with. Do they have staff specifically working on account management, legal, and accounting issues? It is awkward to try to explain business requirements and contracting practices to technical specialists who don’t really understand the importance of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), master sales agreements (MSAs), reporting and other business requirements.
Related links
Building industrial strength user experience
Dr Eric Schaffer
UX Enterprise – The future of UX work
Dr Eric Schaffer
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Privacy policy
Reviewed: 18 Mar 2014
This Privacy Policy governs the manner in which Human Factors International, Inc., an Iowa corporation (“HFI”) collects, uses, maintains and discloses information collected from users (each, a “User”) of its humanfactors.com website and any derivative or affiliated websites on which this Privacy Policy is posted (collectively, the “Website”). HFI reserves the right, at its discretion, to change, modify, add or remove portions of this Privacy Policy at any time by posting such changes to this page. You understand that you have the affirmative obligation to check this Privacy Policy periodically for changes, and you hereby agree to periodically review this Privacy Policy for such changes. The continued use of the Website following the posting of changes to this Privacy Policy constitutes an acceptance of those changes.
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Privacy
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In the course of its business, HFI may perform expert reviews, usability testing, and other consulting work where personal privacy is a concern. HFI believes in the importance of protecting personal information, and may use measures to provide this protection, including, but not limited to, using consent forms for participants or “dummy” test data.
The Information HFI Collects
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How HFI Uses Information
HFI may use personally identifiable information collected through the Website for the specific purposes for which the information was collected, to process purchases and sales of products or services offered via the Website if any, to contact Users regarding products and services offered by HFI, its parent, subsidiary and other related companies in order to otherwise to enhance Users’ experience with HFI. HFI may also use information collected through the Website for research regarding the effectiveness of the Website and the business planning, marketing, advertising and sales efforts of HFI. HFI does not sell any User information under any circumstances.
Disclosure of Information
HFI may disclose personally identifiable information collected from Users to its parent, subsidiary and other related companies to use the information for the purposes outlined above, as necessary to provide the services offered by HFI and to provide the Website itself, and for the specific purposes for which the information was collected. HFI may disclose personally identifiable information at the request of law enforcement or governmental agencies or in response to subpoenas, court orders or other legal process, to establish, protect or exercise HFI’s legal or other rights or to defend against a legal claim or as otherwise required or allowed by law. HFI may disclose personally identifiable information in order to protect the rights, property or safety of a User or any other person. HFI may disclose personally identifiable information to investigate or prevent a violation by User of any contractual or other relationship with HFI or the perpetration of any illegal or harmful activity. HFI may also disclose aggregate, anonymous data based on information collected from Users to investors and potential partners. Finally, HFI may disclose or transfer personally identifiable information collected from Users in connection with or in contemplation of a sale of its assets or business or a merger, consolidation or other reorganization of its business.
Personal Information as Provided by User
If a User includes such User’s personally identifiable information as part of the User posting to the Website, such information may be made available to any parties using the Website. HFI does not edit or otherwise remove such information from User information before it is posted on the Website. If a User does not wish to have such User’s personally identifiable information made available in this manner, such User must remove any such information before posting. HFI is not liable for any damages caused or incurred due to personally identifiable information made available in the foregoing manners. For example, a User posts on an HFI-administered forum would be considered Personal Information as provided by User and subject to the terms of this section.
Security of Information
Information about Users that is maintained on HFI’s systems or those of its service providers is protected using industry standard security measures. However, no security measures are perfect or impenetrable, and HFI cannot guarantee that the information submitted to, maintained on or transmitted from its systems will be completely secure. HFI is not responsible for the circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures relating to the Website by any Users or third parties.
Correcting, Updating, Accessing or Removing Personal Information
If a User’s personally identifiable information changes, or if a User no longer desires to receive non-account specific information from HFI, HFI will endeavor to provide a way to correct, update and/or remove that User’s previously-provided personal data. This can be done by emailing a request to HFI at hfi@humanfactors.com. Additionally, you may request access to the personally identifiable information as collected by HFI by sending a request to HFI as set forth above. Please note that in certain circumstances, HFI may not be able to completely remove a User’s information from its systems. For example, HFI may retain a User’s personal information for legitimate business purposes, if it may be necessary to prevent fraud or future abuse, for account recovery purposes, if required by law or as retained in HFI’s data backup systems or cached or archived pages. All retained personally identifiable information will continue to be subject to the terms of the Privacy Policy to which the User has previously agreed.
Contacting HFI
If you have any questions or comments about this Privacy Policy, you may contact HFI via any of the following methods:
Human Factors International, Inc.
PO Box 2020
1680 highway 1, STE 3600
Fairfield IA 52556
hfi@humanfactors.com
(800) 242-4480
Terms and Conditions for Public Training Courses
Reviewed: 18 Mar 2014
Cancellation of Course by HFI
HFI reserves the right to cancel any course up to 14 (fourteen) days prior to the first day of the course. Registrants will be promptly notified and will receive a full refund or be transferred to the equivalent class of their choice within a 12-month period. HFI is not responsible for travel expenses or any costs that may be incurred as a result of cancellations.
Cancellation of Course by Participants (All regions except India)
$100 processing fee if cancelling within two weeks of course start date.
Cancellation / Transfer by Participants (India)
4 Pack + Exam registration: Rs. 10,000 per participant processing fee (to be paid by the participant) if cancelling or transferring the course (4 Pack-CUA/CXA) registration before three weeks from the course start date. No refund or carry forward of the course fees if cancelling or transferring the course registration within three weeks before the course start date.
Cancellation / Transfer by Participants (Online Courses)
$100 processing fee if cancelling within two weeks of course start date. No cancellations or refunds less than two weeks prior to the first course start date.
Individual Modules: Rs. 3,000 per participant ‘per module’ processing fee (to be paid by the participant) if cancelling or transferring the course (any Individual HFI course) registration before three weeks from the course start date. No refund or carry forward of the course fees if cancelling or transferring the course registration within three weeks before the course start date.
Exam: Rs. 3,000 per participant processing fee (to be paid by the participant) if cancelling or transferring the pre agreed CUA/CXA exam date before three weeks from the examination date. No refund or carry forward of the exam fees if requesting/cancelling or transferring the CUA/CXA exam within three weeks before the examination date.
No Recording Permitted
There will be no audio or video recording allowed in class. Students who have any disability that might affect their performance in this class are encouraged to speak with the instructor at the beginning of the class.
Course Materials Copyright
The course and training materials and all other handouts provided by HFI during the course are published, copyrighted works proprietary and owned exclusively by HFI. The course participant does not acquire title nor ownership rights in any of these materials. Further the course participant agrees not to reproduce, modify, and/or convert to electronic format (i.e., softcopy) any of the materials received from or provided by HFI. The materials provided in the class are for the sole use of the class participant. HFI does not provide the materials in electronic format to the participants in public or onsite courses.