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In my efforts to sell UX in my company, I want to round up some good examples that show the value of UX.

I just read a UX Matters post called Evangelizing UX Across an Entire Organization.

In it, they say:

collect and present case studies... look to sources that are not UX sources. For example, it is much better to share material from Fast Company, Business Week, and Harvard Business Review than from Boxes and Arrows or UXmatters

Has anyone come across articles like this?

I love Jared Spool's 300 Million Dollar Button as an example for showing the value of UX but that's not a "non-UX source" either.

This answer lists some good articles for justifying UX, but they all seem to be UX Sources as well.

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  • Why do you need a non-ux source?
    – dmacfour
    Jan 10, 2015 at 0:07
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    @dmacfour I've encountered the same problem (as a UX designer/consultant seeking work in an industry that doesn't traditionally use UX design practices). In situations like this, sending project decision makers a technical article about usability or UX is going to just confuse them and cause them to ignore you. I've found sending UXMatters articles and even NNGroup articles to people outside our field mostly just confused them and required me to explain main points of those articles at a very high level rather than making them read the whole thing.
    – David
    Jan 10, 2015 at 0:38
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    @interrobang +1. I'm adding an answer now. What kind of people are you trying to sell UX to? Are they marketers, salespeople, developers, graphic designers, or something else?
    – David
    Jan 10, 2015 at 0:58
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    +1 to @David comment. Audience matters. You need resources that align with the mindset of your audience for it to make the most impact.
    – nightning
    Jan 10, 2015 at 1:05
  • @David they are developers, marketers, and executives.
    – sgryzko
    Jan 16, 2015 at 0:37

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The most appropriate answer can depend on how the people you are selling UX to currently approaches design.

Do they approach it as marketing? As development? As web design / graphic design? Find names in those fields that they would know, and draw out points that those people make which have relevance to UX. Don't force UX buzzwords on them; start by tying the buzzwords that they are using into principles in our field.

An industry that I try to sell UX to - which mostly doesn't do user-centered design, even though some company names in this industry would shock you because of how user-centered you may think they would be - approaches design in several different ways.

I deal with digital products - websites and software. For clients that describe their current web effort as digital marketing, and have their existing site designed by a local or industry-specific marketing firm, I should be using the language of digital marketing. Similarly, others see websites as a graphic designer's domain, which means that I should meet them there before interweaving UX into our discussions. And likewise for those who see it as web development, customer service, and so on.

The industry that I am trying to sell to actually talks a lot about guest experience rather than user experience, so I'm also looking at how to tie that into convincing prospects to invest in digital UX design. As I learn more about it, I might write some articles about that for my own site and send them to prospects.

For those who see design as primarily marketing: I can't recommend Seth Godin highly enough. He has written a ton over the years (check out his books too), but here are some posts related to user experience that don't use UX jargon:

  1. The most important rule
  2. The thermostat and the frying pan
  3. Four questions worth answering

For those who see it as development: Coding Horror is a more technically-focused blog written from a development perspective, but it also has some good reads:

  1. Selling Usability (more for you than for the people you are selling it to, but some good ideas here)
  2. The Cost of Complexity
  3. Sharing the Customer's Pain

For graphic design, I think someone else should answer since I have less familiarity with that.

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