[Sigia-l] Information Architecture and Usability Professions

[Jared M. Spool]

At 08:32 PM 9/4/2006, Ziya Oz wrote:

>Bill Killam:
>
> > First, there's that silly assertion that usability [people] are sitting in
> > judgment of design.
>
>Of course, they are. At the end of a usability test someone has to interpret
>the results and make a judgment/recommendation to the person who hired them.
>What's often galling is that usability people not only make a judgment (as
>to whether the design works or not) but often go ahead and recommend ways to
>correct it (if it doesn't work), a process of design they are likely not
>well versed with.

This comes from an outdated notion of what the function of usability 
practice is. Modern usability practice isn't about ensuring a design is 
usable, making a list of (untested) recommendations because, somehow, a 
usability person knows more than everyone else.

Modern usability practice is about bringing information into the decision 
making practice so that decisions the *team* makes are informed and thought 
through. You can't do this with post-design inspections and tests. You need 
to do the research in advance of design, bringing the information into the 
process.

We actually teach our clients to *not* make recommendations for change 
based on testing results. Instead, we teach them to present the 
observations and discuss *all* the possible inferences that could be drawn, 
constructing further research objectives to reduce the possible inferences 
to a workable set.

> > "the employer evaluates the "usability dudes'" work.
>
>How? Divine intervention? This is absurd because the employer, in the vast
>majority of cases, is a business man/woman who signs the checks and has as
>much design and UX evaluation sense as a mollusk.

Well, if a business is poorly run and can't assess whether their employees 
are contributing to their success or not, that's an entirely different 
discussion (hopefully on a different listserv).

I'm assuming that quality employers *can* and *do* assess the contribution 
of their employees successfully. The teams we've studied who consistently 
produce excellent customer/user experiences certainly have a good 
assessment process as part of their culture. It goes hand-in-hand.

>Usability people have positioned themselves as the gateway between the
>design and the users, as the final arbiters of suitability.

AH-HEM!!!

Hello!!

Not all of us feel this is the way things are done!! Give us some credit here.

>Yet we don't
>have formal methods to judge *their* effectiveness and competency. The claim
>of some amorphous notion of an "employer" judging them is at best a cop out.

Again, this is a 1980's notion of usability you're referring to. Here, in 
the new millennium, we don't see ourselves as arbiters, but as people 
helping the design team understand what they need to know to make informed 
decisions.


>Usability >  Simplify the Solution
>Design >  Simplify the Problem

Try this instead:

Usability > Inform the design process



Jared M. Spool, Founding Principal, User Interface Engineering
510 Turnpike Street, Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845
978 327-5561   jspool at uie.com  http://www.uie.com
Blog: http://www.uie.com/brainsparks