7.1 Introduction

The popularity and adoption of the Web over the past 10 years have benefited user experience (UE) professionals in two ways: a wider and less technical user population has adopted computers, and users are more likely to select products based on ease of use, rather than solely on features (Black, 2002; Souza et al., 2001). As a result, companies recognized the importance of hiring UE professionals, and the popularity of UE groups in vendor companies was at a peak in the late 1990s and early in the new millennium. The demand for UE professionals at that time was greater than the supply, resulting in increases in compensation, fast hiring, and on-the-job training for individuals from other fields. In 2000, competition for UE professionals was so strong that people were poaching candidates from competitors' recruiting parties at the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction conference, and cash sign-on bonuses were being offered. During this period, most high-tech companies had such high revenue or expectations of high revenue (in the case of startups funded by venture capital), with explicit customer demands for usability, that cost-justifying usability was not a strong focus.

Unfortunately, following the cyclical nature of economics, the high-tech boom ended. Initially, unlike in prior economic downturns, UE professionals were not the first to be downsized (personal communications). Companies had learned a valuable lesson about customers' expectations of usable products. However, as the downturn turned from months...