Creating Passionate Users: Subvert from Within: a user-focused employee guide

A bunch of great tips for fomenting a bottom-up, user-centric revolution in your bigass company.

Here’s my little unofficial guide to creating passionate users for those working in Big Companies. Most is from things a maverick (but cleverly disguised as compliant) group of us did at Sun, while we could. Only one of our original disruption team remains a badged Sun employee, but our legacy persists today in areas that won’t make us famous, but do make a substantial difference in the experience that users get within the sphere we influenced.

One tip particularly caught my eye:

Never underestimate the power of paper

Print out little signs that say things like, “How does this help the user kick ass?” and leave them lying on the copier, or the fax machine, or taped on a bulletin board and your cube/office wall. Keep changing them! (Remember, once your brain expects to see it, it stops being effective.)

Nice one. And it’s true—you go totally blind to notes when they don’t change. Lots of great advice throughout the post.