Job Roles, Continued

Customer Focus

One heartening trend is in customer- or user-centered web roles. Usability experts, quality assurance people, human factors designers, and customer support representatives are all in increasing demand by companies engaged in large-scale web work.

At the Web Design and Development '98 conference (San Francisco, June 1998), there were probably double the number of usability or customer service sessions than there were last year. This represents a growing awareness of the importance of users in an interactive medium, and may evolve into a new core role on web teams: the keeper of the customer's flame. Few organizations have on-staff user-centered design experts, but many are starting to hire these positions. For example, Studio Archetype in San Francisco recently beefed up their design studio with an "Advanced UI Lab" (http://www.studioarchetype.com/lab/lab_frameset.html) whose work is described as follows:

"Our work is a combination of pure and applied research into improving Web sites and applications. Often the work is an outcome of specific projects; sometimes it's a byproduct of trend analysis. Our goals are to do things that have never been possible on the Web before, and to improve the usefulness, ease of use, and enjoyment of the Web for users."

vivid studios, also in San Francisco, has an Experience Group (http://www.vivid.com/form/teams/experience.html) with a similar purpose. Members of the Experience Group participate in research and discovery projects (such as visiting a shopping mall or going to the theatre) designed to provide insight into web problems.

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