[ID Discuss] Convention versus innovation

[Whitney Quesenbery]

Change does not always have to be breaking platform standards, but might 
simply be changes in the way the UI is currently designed.

I was part of group that completely redesigned the "framework" UI within 
which an entire suite of inter-related applications ran. This was an 
enterprise application, and each company using it might have over a 
thousand customer service operators trained to use the software.

The question the manager posed to use was not "is this better?" but "how 
long will it take to retrain all of those users, and how can I present this 
with confidence to the customers?"

So we did usability testing aimed at understanding how hard the transition 
would be.

It turned out that with a brief explanation and a small job aid that showed 
how the hot keys they were currently using mapped to the new UI (that is, 
we maintained functional parity, even if the visual interface and 
interaction changed significantly) it required only a brief explanation and 
a relatively short period of use to get back up to speed.



At 10:47 PM 4/23/2004 -0700, Pabini Gabriel-Petit wrote:
>Hi Sandeep
>
>I agree with what Andrei Herisimchuk said about validating innovation design
>solutions through usability testing. There is one powerful appeal you can
>make to the product management people on your team: product differentiation.
>It's where they live. Also, innovative designs are usually the ones that win
>awards. So, if you're working with some forward-thinking people who trust
>you, you should be able to persuade them to let you innovate.
>
>Sandeep Jain asked:
>How does one go about convincing non-designer, decision makers
> > (product managers etc) to take a chance with an
> > innovative design?
>
>Pabini
>________________________________________
>
>Pabini Gabriel-Petit
>Principal & User Experience Architect
>Spirit Softworks
>www.spiritsoftworks.com
>
>_______________________________________________
>Interaction Design Discussion List
>discuss at interactiondesigners.com
>--
>to change your options (unsubscribe or set digest): 
>http://discuss.interactiondesigners.com
>--
>Questions: lists at interactiondesigners.com
>--
>Announcement Online List (discussion list members get announcements already)
>http://interactiondesigners.com/announceList/
>--
>http://interactiondesigners.com/


Whitney Quesenbery
Whitney Interactive Design, LLC
w. www.WQusability.com
e. whitneyq at wqusability.com
p. 908-638-5467

UPA  - www.usabilityprofessionals.org
STC Usability SIG: www.stcsig.org/usability