Warmest Greetings,

I'm A Usability Liberal  

:: Friday, September 10, 2004 ::

Who would have thought the usability field would remind me of the USA political scene?

The way I approach my work in the usability field, I consider myself to be a Liberal Usability person, or Libus.

I'm the one in tattered jeans and greasy t-shirt, sprawled on the floor of the garage staring face up into the engine of my client's web site or shopping cart. As their usability mechanic, I check for leaks (page abandonment) and broken hoses (confusing navigation where people get stuck or lost) and make sure the site passes inspection (meets standards for user centered design with the emphasis on conversions and based on their requirements.)

On the other side of the ticket are people who are rich and famous and see no need for usability or they lump it in with marketing or behavioral study. These are the Evangelical Usability people, or Evus. Rhymes with evil.

This group has, among its various gurus, folks like Jakob Nielsen who act as preacher from the pulpit and deliver the fire and brimstone, "This is the way and the only way, as set forth by the Usability God" sermon.

And then there's little 'old affordable usability testing solo act me who approaches each project as a unique entity. I inquire, as any well trained Quality Assurance engineer does, what the business and functional, and non-functional requirements are. This directs me, not the official Usability Law Book, which must be somewhere, but I haven't found it yet. I think you have to vote Evus to get a copy. Or live in Texas.

Am I the only person who gets riled up at statments such as,

     "Usability appears to me to be mostly about the ergonomics of task driven applications. (snip). If the web is mostly a means of communication, which I think it is, then a task-driven perspective is too simplistic a framework for an analysis about usefulness."

Okay everybody. Put away those shopping carts, online banking apps and I'm sorry Autobytel, but nobody is coming to buy cars from you.

Or,

     "I'm not sure that usability is a value added service."

Lucky for Bill he's a close friend, else I would have sent my goons to shake him up.

or,

     "If usability, as a value-added service, is being pulled in many different directions, perhaps it is because usability is still struggling to find a place in the value chain." Still yanking my chain, Peter.

To which I replied with,

     "I was able to prove to one company that the $150,000 they spent on a design that was not tested for usability would be a complete failure if the design they bought was used.

That's value, in my book"

Every day I'm buried in places like the interactiondesigners.com discussion list (Interaction Design Discussion List, discuss@ixdg.org), where the top of the crop hang out. From them I find solace that what I do, for far less money than the usability testing houses charge, is honorable and needed.

I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty and my painted toe nails look totally hot even when poking out from underneath the bowels of someone's shopping cart.

Source for today's outburst: I'm a usability mechanic and there are a lot of us out there.

"More and more companies and government agencies are doing usability testing. And, they are doing more of it, starting earlier in the process, and testing iteratively. Over the past 10 years, usability testing has become more integrated into the development process, especially in web design. As a result, we are doing more informal, formative, diagnostic usability testing now than ever before." -- Honing Your Usability Testing Skills: An Interview with Ginny Redish

:: posted by Kim Krause Berg on 9/10/2004 09:11:57 AM

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