Marketing vs. Usability?

Written May 30. 2000, at 14:20 GMT.

Here are a couple of random quotes from the CHI-WEB mailing list, that I relate to a lot!

"marketing isn't the enemy, you just need to work with them to find out their needs, then use your superior knowledge of human behavior to help them meet their goals sucessfully." - christina (cwodtke@sirius.com)

"marketing needs to communicate their goals and needs and let the ui person decide how best to accomplish that based on the audience and the site." - Birgitte Eaton

This relates to independent web-development companies in a way that the "marketing" department easily fits into the slot of the "client-advocate" in Peter Merholz's web development team diagram.

In the company I work for we're currently in the process of defining and forming the role of the user-advocates within the design and development process.

My two greatest concerns are that the user-advocates must...

...connect equally well to all parts of the development-process. (User- centered issues are equally important in grapics-design and software design.)

...be able to interact with the client-advocates in a way that will prove beneficial to both ends. (No marketing vs. usability please!)

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