[IxDA Discuss] Technology for User Research

[John Schrag]

Mark Schraad wrote:
> Maybe I am out of the mainstream, but usability seems to be
> cropping up as a common denominator for anything user centered.

I've been doing this work for about 20 years now -- research, ix design,
validation, iteration, all that good stuff.  And I've noticed that every
few years, the field seems to make some new decision about what to call
things.  When I started out, we all called it HCI or CHI.  Then someone
decided that HCI only referred to one small part of the job, so we (at
my company) started to call ourselves "Usability".  Then someone decided
that 'usability' only referred to verification, so we started to call
ourselves 'interaction designers' --- same deal;  now we call ourselves
'user experience'.  Note that the job hasn't changed;  we still do the
whole process.  It's just the terminology shifting around.  It's no
wonder that every few months on some mailing list an argument arises as
to what all the terms mean.  (In fact, I bet someone will respond to
this with a note telling me what the "real" meanings of all the terms
are.  In fact, I notice that frequently someone will invent a new term
for an existing activity to try to differentiate their incremental
process improvement from standard practice.

> Traditionally, usability testing is something that the human factors
> or HCI folks had done after the product was finished. It has always
> seemed too late.

If a professional is doing usability testing after a product is
finished, then their goal is probably to convince management that they
have made a terrible, terrible error by leaving it so late.  :-)

-john