CHI 97 Electronic Publications: Organizational Overviews
The Founding of the Netscape User Experience Group
Tony Fernandes
Netscape Communications
685 East Middlefield Road
Mountain View, CA 94043
+1-415.528.2879
tony@netscape.com
ABSTRACT
Netscape Communications is a company that has grown faster than any
other software company in history. Although the design effort at
Netscape has evolved greatly, the initial experience of bringing design
into an organization in hypergrowth provided some valuable lessons in
the creation of a successful design organization.
KEYWORDS
Organizations, usability testing, human factors, visual design.
© 1997 Copyright on this material is held by the authors.
SETTING
Netscape evolved from a privatly held start-up to a very successful
public corporation in less than two years. Initialy, there was one
interface designer, no fulltime visual designers, no in-house usability
testing, and an overwhelming amount of work. The good news what the
environment was not only supported of good user interface design, it was
set up to be led by user interface specifications: in my experience,
this was both rare and unique. Because the company was so young, there
was tremendous opportunity to create a robust design process and to
solidify the positive relationships that existed between the user
interface designer and the engineers. Because Netscape went public
during this period, there were significant funds available for the
creation of a state-of-the-art organization.
FIRST THINGS FIRST
The first step was to understand the amount of design work that needed
to be done. The Netscape business was composed of three main areas:
Client Products (Navigator), Server Products and Commercial
Applications(large-scale servers and services). It was clear that there
were not enough resources to support all parts of the company. Triage
and prioritization was used. Given that a large part of the company's
revenues were borne out of the client side of the business, it became
clear that is merited the priority in terms of design resources. The
priorities were communicated, the needed buy-in was received, and hiring
proceeded as quickly as possible. Because the Netscape was growing so
fast, budgets and replanning happened at a 6 month basis so headcount
planning was approached on a very short term basis with constant
rethinking to deal with the changing business climate.
CREATING THE GROUP
Upon talking to all the appropriate people from all facets of the
company, a road map was created that articulated the headcount needs
and commitments to support key products. It was critical for this buy-in
to happen in order for the appropriate managers to help in the
recruiting and interviewing process: disagreement would become obvious
to candidates and it would impact their desire to join the company.
Given past experience in dealing with strong group identities[1], no
identity was created for the group. In fact, it retained it very
informal name: The Gooey Group. It was important that the design team be
percieved as part of engineering team and not a seperate body: the
engineering/designer relationship is abolutely critical to the success
of any commercial software product.
Past experience had taught me that hiring the right people was the
single most important thing for a manager to focus on. Given the
hypergroth of the company, the candidates all had to meet the following
criteria:
- Experienced in commercial software design
- Extremely talented
- Self motivated and managed
- A passion for their work
- User-centered
- Flexible
- An ego that was under control
- Extremely good communicator
- A good sense of humor
- Design producer, not design critic
The highest recruiting priorty was given to the creation of visual
design and usability testing programs. Prior to hiring usability testing
staff, a usability lab was designed and its construction begun. The hope
was that the usability testing staff being on board and the completion
of a lab would coincide.
As the amount of projects grew, designers were assigned to differnt
products in order to provide the widest possible support. The lines of
responsibility were made clear in order to insure that no time was
wasted in duplicated effort.
Because the group was initially critically understaffed relative to the
needs, it required us to use engineers as usability champions[2]. The
designers reviewed all designs however.
The three main areas of staffing were in usability testing, visual
design, and interaction design. Within those broad areas of expertise,
designers were organized into product design groups with a design lead.
Focussing on the future was difficult because of all the immediate
needs. It was apparent that if any designers started and were give
future-oriented tasks, they would quickly get involved in short term
work because of the tremendous need. To solve this problem, a senior
designer was hired and based in Paris: just about as far as you could
get from California on Earth given its spherical shape.
GETTING WHAT YOU ASKED FOR
It is a common problem for design organizations to not feel heard or
part of the process. The Netscape User Experience Group had the opposite
problem: the product revolved around the UI specifications and the
designers were responsible for maintaining them. The good news was that
the UI designers had a great deal of control over what went on in the
product. The bad news was that the designers often wound up on the
critical path because the specifications were not complete.
LESSONS LEARNED DURING HYPERGROWTH
Staffing
Injecting large-scale design into an environment requires that the
introduction of new people and processes be a purely positive
experience.Hiring standards were a critical factor in the acceptance of
the group. If any new member of the group brough in negative attitudes,
it would have disrupted the ability for the group to function as a
whole. My rule of thumb in the commercial setting is that 1 bad
designer will cost you two good designers in terms of productivity.
Wide coverage
Providing wide coverage came at a cost. The amount of detailed
specification suffered. In addition, the team had little opportunity to
conduct meaningful design reviews because the product domains were so
different. It became critical for the team as a whole to meet on a
regular basis. At times, the temptation was too great and the group took
on more work than its numbers allowed. The amount of high quality design
produced was nothing short of miraculous but it came at a human cost.
Relationships
The relationships between the designers and engineers was outstanding
and it proved that designers can successfully take the lead in the
design of a product.
Remote advanced work
Having a designer working on advanced designs remotely worked extremely
well and provided a wealth of ideas for more short-term products as well
as long-term products.
Getting outside help
Using outside contractors seems to be the logical thing to do when an
organization is understaffed but it comes at a cost of educating,
communicating, and expertise that leaves with the contractor. In
Netscape's hypergrowth, outside resources only made sense when they were
used for a well understood task such as drawing a specific icon.
Usability Testing
Because the environment was so fast-paced, planning for tests was
difficult. To deal with this reality, groups of users were scheduled
every Friday and the actual designs they evaluated were selected by the
unfolding events of the week.
The Netscape User Experience Group is likely the fastest growing design
group in software industry history. It has shown that techniques used in
growing a design group need to be improvisational rather than procedural.
REFERENCES
[1] Fernandes, Tony, "The Claris Interface Design Group: A Personal
Retrospective", SIGCHI Conference Proceedings, 1996, New York,
Association for Computing Machinery
[2] Mrazek, Deborah, et al, "Integrating Human Factors on a Large Scale:
Product Usability Champions", SIGCHI Conference Proceedings, 1992, New
York, Association for Computing Machinery
CHI 97 Electronic Publications: Organizational Overviews
