Re: [Usability]List policy, usability leadership, mission statement [Was: "widget"]

[Seth Nickell <snickell stanford edu>]

On Thu, 2002-08-01 at 03:07, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> <quote who="Seth Nickell">
> 
> > And maybe this is partly an issue of "we need to publicize our resources
> > and what work we have done better". I'm not fully sure at this point.
> 
> This is *maximally* an issue of communication and publicity. The usability
> team, without clear leadership or structure, will not be able to achieve as
> much as we hope.

Effectively the "usability team" is a very small set of people. Small
groups of people don't need as much explicit structure to be able to
work and interact effectively. Definitely some, but not as much. (Take
Tuomas and Jimmac working on icons for example, I think usability is
more effectively managed closer to that format than say, how the release
team works). 

Now where this all goes south is when said team needs to interact more
with the world.... Our "organization crisis" is mostly an external
problem than an internal problem right now. So what we *most* need to do
is not "establish clear leadership" but establish clear channels by
which we communicate group consensus, findings, decisions, whatever.

-Seth