I recent attended a UPA meeting and hot the topic of discussion was ‘Taking usability in to the field: some opportunities and threats’.
The NHS project case study that was presented was interesting and provided some good insights to the issues that are encountered within the health service (which, I assume, any NHS user will probably already know about!).
The main topic of the follow-up presentation and the floor discussion was; everybody who’s anybody in the IT sector is talking about and practicing usability. Is this a good evolution for the usability industry OR do we stand the risk of naturalising the usability service that our clients expect? Thus perhaps making it hard(er) to encourage clients to support and engage in usability tasks that are suitable for the project in hand. An example that was discussed was lab based usability testing which may be suitable for a retail web site but is not so for an operational application; where users in the field[1] commonly cut corners and short circuit formal processes in order to work more efficiently or just simply make their life easier!
Shockingly, the consensus from the floor was that all too often field studies are not conducted. And to top that sometimes users are not involved in the initial research or the design stages but are instead brought in to ‘test’ what the ‘experts’ have conceived!
Absolute madness! I work as a user experience consultant. If I was asked to research and design a solution without some end user input, I would be out-a-there like a whippet!
Perhaps the agile project process is an answer to this problematic scenario? The key principles of adopting an agile project approach mean that the design and usability team are based on site for as many days of the week as possible and that they are supported by a user representative who can be called upon for industry knowledge as and when it is required. I’ll stop the agile spin there as this subject is a whole other blog.
For me, the topic being discussed at the UPA meeting (a discussion that should happen more during project initiation) should have started with… ‘Are we specialists in the industry within which we have been asked to design? And, do we understand the audience of the product?’ I normally find the answer to be no.
I have a Bachelor of Arts in Product Design and have an excellent knowledge in ergonomics, anthropometrics, materials engineering and cognitive science but I have no formal qualifications in underwriting insurance, broking mortgages, creating digital strategies for retail, managing customer relations within a utility firm, global asset management of energy giants or politics. I have worked on many successful products within these business sectors as I practice what I preach; I can not design for a problem that I do not understand.
— sian james
- done on my laptop on the plane
[1] field - AKA reality