Canada just hosted a great Olympics in Vancouver! Not just the whole Canadian nation but most of the world was also hooked to their TVs watching the 2010 Winter Olympics.
As I watched the Games, I began wondering about how much training the athletes go through before they meet their goals. After doing some research, I discovered that for athletes to participate in the Olympics they have to plan, strategize and practice for years.
After reading about their practices and watching the Games, I feel there are a few commonalities between the journey an athlete takes to win a medal and how we run UX projects. I’m summarizing them below:
I went to the gym so can I compete in the Olympics? 
These days, organizations would like to achieve high usability standards with just one iteration of design and without a long-term commitment to user-experience practices.
Going through one iteration of design is like an athlete going to the gym for, say a few months, and then thinking he or she is ready to participate in the Olympics. It takes athletes years of practice before they are able to even think about participating in the Olympic Games.
The same goes for early adapters of user-experience— it takes practice. With just one design iteration, the site becomes usable to some extent, but that doesn’t mean that it’s ready to win the gold medal (metaphorically speaking). Design is iterative because your users’ behavior and needs change over time; your design has to evolve in parallel. The great thing about site design is that it doesn’t take as much effort as it does to become an Olympic athlete for it to win the user-experience gold medal.
Sid the Kid – did he bring home the gold on his own or was there a team involved?
I watched 2010 Winter Olympics’ men’s ice hockey final between the USA and Canada. It’s been estimated that 8.2 million people were watching that game. Canada won the gold when Crosby scored the last goal during overtime.
It was a great move; all of Canada cheered at that moment. I think I even cried, and I’m not even that big a fan of hockey. But when Crosby was asked what was going on in his mind at the time of the winning goal, he replied, “I just shot it.” Game analysts say that he did have a strategy at the very last minute that helped him get the goal. After watching the game, I think that one thing that also won gold for Canada in men’s hockey, is the great teamwork exhibited at each of Canada’s games. Hockey cannot be successfully played if the team is not synchronized and isn’t working towards that winning goal.
Teamwork is a great factor when we look at UX projects. A project involves the researchers, the recruiter (who gets the users), the project manager, a content strategist, a business analyst and a designer. A well thought-out and good design requires that all of these folks work together and that each person does his or her job until the designer scores that winning goal. A project’s success is dependent on all of these people working together towards that final goal.
What do you do after winning a medal?
The Olympics are done, but our athletes’ work is not done. They celebrate their medals for a few days and then it’s back to work. There’s another Olympics they need to train for, by sharing those stories and by helping other athletes get to the place that they are at, right now.
In the UX community, we have many “medalists.” I’m really proud to see that they don’t settle down once they reach the top of their game, but that they strive harder to spread user-experience awareness and their hard-earned knowledge. After each achievement, they celebrate for a few days and then they are back in the game. They start researching more, finding better ways to understand their users, and to provide the best work to meet those needs. Once that’s done, they share that with the rest of the community and help others become gold medalists.
Posted in on March 11, 2010
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