[IxDA Discuss] The mighty UX guru has spoken - Discuss!!

[Katie Albers]

I can't decide whether to be amused by the irony or deeply depressed 
by the presence of the usability/design dichotomy that's playing out 
in this question -- certainly elsewhere in this thread if not in this 
particular piece of it.

I came to usability precisely because it was not about metrics -- it 
was about a holistic view of whether users could effectively and 
happily perform their required tasks with your product. Some of the 
most inefficient ways of getting to that information are 
statistically valid tests (aka "measurements") for performance 
against set parameters.

As I worked in that field, I came more and more to believe that 
usability was a far more pervasive element than I had previously 
considered it.

* You design and define the overall product because it will be useful 
and therefore, the greater its usability the more financially 
remunerative
* You define the personae because they are tools in creating a 
functional and usable product
* You design the process so that it will be as nearly self-evident as 
possible and therefore usable
* You design the taxonomy and information architecture to support the 
user's needs and ease their path
* You define the visual elements so that they support certain goals 
which make the product usable (This must be obvious; this needs to be 
present but we don't want it to distract attention; we need to make 
sure they notice this...)
* You design tests on an ongoing basis -- where "test" usually means 
sitting in a room with a series of individual users who conform to 
the personae and having them use the product
*You design the interactions so that the response methods and 
progress through the product are apparent and usable

None of that is metric. Almost none of it is a "last thing". The only 
two places where I don't consider usability practitioners as 
essential are in the actual coding of the product and in the actual 
creation of the visual presence -- although they play editorial roles 
in both.

Usability is not a science. It has scientific elements to it. But 
anyone who's been practicing in the field for any length of time can 
tell you stories of the times when the scientifically perfect 
response failed utterly.

I realize that there are a million different definitions of usability 
professional -- that's what mine has grown to be after 15 years of 
practice. To me, usability in the sense of "delightful" as well as 
coldly "efficient"  is the start point and the end point of the 
development cycle and informs all the phases in between.

Katie

At 4:56 AM +0000 12/19/07, Jeff Seager wrote:
>  > *Good* designers are, in fact, more enlightened about
>>  good design than *good* usability practitioners and it is that indefinable
>>  something that separates art from science that makes it so.
>
>Hmmmm.  Not all of us live in that dichotomous world that divides 
>art from science.  We may have to agree to disagree, if our 
>perceptions about that are so different.
>
>It seems you assume that a designer can't be a usability 
>practitioner, and I think he or she must be both to be good at 
>either one.  I perceive usability and design as complementary 
>considerations that combine to yield varying degrees of satisfaction 
>in user experience.  It sounds like your definition of a usability 
>practitioner is one who, like Jakob Nielsen, only assesses the work 
>of others and designs nothing himself.  Or one engaged in the 
>metrics of usability.  Am I interpreting you correctly, Joseph?  I 
>don't meant to be contentious at all, only to understand your 
>perspective.
>
>Evaluating the usability of design -- we're talking interaction 
>design, right? not something painted on afterward or applied as a 
>skin? -- is a rightful part of the design process, and many factors 
>argue for its integration long before a prototype is presented for 
>testing. Similarly, it makes no sense to ignore accessibility 
>considerations from the start.  Accessibility and usability are hard 
>to separate anyway.  Good design doesn't need to be retrofitted with 
>anything, because it's designed with all essential criteria in mind 
>from the beginning.  Of course, these are ideals and our real-world 
>experience has to make allowances for all kinds of circumstances. 
>But given the opportunity to do it right, my own life experience 
>with everything from fixing cars to fixing websites tells me that 
>it's very hard to go back in and retrofit usability when it was not 
>considered important at the outset or at other points in the design 
>process.
>
>Regards,
>Jeff Seager

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Katie Albers
User Experience Consulting & Project Management
katie at firstthought.com