Summary: Train your designers and developers to do some of their own usability work. This gets them thinking about users while it frees up usability specialists to focus on your more difficult usability issues. Everyone wins.
Knowledge Transfer is the Key
The key to long term usability success in a company is to train designers and developers. Instead of bringing in an endless stream of usability specialists to handle the same usability problems, you should train the people that design and build your technology. In other words, the way to bake usability into your company is to squeeze knowledge from usability specialists.
There is one caveat. You cannot transfer all knowledge and skill. The simple usability problems can be handled by the troops, but the more difficult questions will still require the expertise of the usability specialists. But that’s fine. It means that the value of the usability specialists goes up because they are working on more difficult problems. It also means they don’t have to be bothered by the same old problems again and again. In short, usability specialists don’t go away.
Crank Up the Disambiguation Machine
You cannot expect designers and developers to spend all of their time doing usability work. No one should expect them to run around like little usability monkeys. However, once they understand the basics, 5-10% of their time should be spent on usability.
There’s a good business reason for this. Once they become skilled in the basics of usability they will become more productive. For example, not everything can be spelled out in a project specification. With a pinch of testing, many stupid little design questions just go away. This makes everyone happy. Users get better software, project managers get projects completed quicker, and developers don’t have to deal with as much ambiguity. (Programmers hate ambiguity.)
The Right Training
In my experience there are two basic types of usability training that all designers and developers should receive. First, they should learn how to do a quick and dirty task analysis. Second, they should learn how to do a super easy usability test.
The purpose of a task analysis is to understand how a task is performed. The key is to figure out how something is done and why something is done. There really shouldn’t be any judgment. “Just the facts, ma’am.”
A super simple task analysis can be defined this way. Pick a task, break the task into smaller tasks, and then stop when it makes sense. The key is to focus on the user in the task. What do they want? What do they need? How can the process be improved for the user?
The beautiful thing about task analysis is that it is suited to programming. Programmers already spend a large fraction of their time decomposing tasks. However, their normal focus is on machine tasks not human tasks.
Like a task analysis, the purpose of a usability test is to figure out how people use stuff. You want to see people interact with stuff and learn what works and what doesn’t. Can people find what they want? What steps do they take? How does the product or service cause them to screw up? And so on.
Conducting a usability test can be quick and easy. You can ask just about anyone to sit down and use a web site for example. Of course it is best to have a structured environment, scenarios, a representative sample of users, and so on. But, it is better to have a sloppy usability test at the start of a project than it is to have a great usability test at the end of a project.
Get Your People Thinking About Other People
I’ve really cut some corners in this article but I hope you get some of the main points. You want designers and developers involved in the usability process because once they understand users better, they will create more usable stuff. That’s a beautiful thing.
It will take 1-2 of solid training days to get your designers and developers up to speed. A usability specialist (with training experience) should do the training and the focus should be about 25-30% conceptual and 70-75% practical. The concepts aren’t too difficult but training people to listen and have empathy is no small chore. Usability specialists are empathy machines whereas designers and developers are typically a bit more narcissistic.
(My apologies to all of you loving, caring developers.)
I’ll end this by saying that usability is a great investment. You are probably reading this because you already care about usability and you understand its value. However, instead of thinking about usability as being the province of usability specialists think about your entire company embracing usability. Why not start with your designers and developers?
Knowledge Transfer is the Key
The key to long term usability success in a company is to train designers and developers. Instead of bringing in an endless stream of usability specialists to handle the same usability problems, you should train the people that design and build your technology. In other words, the way to bake usability into your company is to squeeze knowledge from usability specialists.
There is one caveat. You cannot transfer all knowledge and skill. The simple usability problems can be handled by the troops, but the more difficult questions will still require the expertise of the usability specialists. But that’s fine. It means that the value of the usability specialists goes up because they are working on more difficult problems. It also means they don’t have to be bothered by the same old problems again and again. In short, usability specialists don’t go away.
Crank Up the Disambiguation Machine
You cannot expect designers and developers to spend all of their time doing usability work. No one should expect them to run around like little usability monkeys. However, once they understand the basics, 5-10% of their time should be spent on usability.
There’s a good business reason for this. Once they become skilled in the basics of usability they will become more productive. For example, not everything can be spelled out in a project specification. With a pinch of testing, many stupid little design questions just go away. This makes everyone happy. Users get better software, project managers get projects completed quicker, and developers don’t have to deal with as much ambiguity. (Programmers hate ambiguity.)
The Right Training
In my experience there are two basic types of usability training that all designers and developers should receive. First, they should learn how to do a quick and dirty task analysis. Second, they should learn how to do a super easy usability test.
The purpose of a task analysis is to understand how a task is performed. The key is to figure out how something is done and why something is done. There really shouldn’t be any judgment. “Just the facts, ma’am.”
A super simple task analysis can be defined this way. Pick a task, break the task into smaller tasks, and then stop when it makes sense. The key is to focus on the user in the task. What do they want? What do they need? How can the process be improved for the user?
The beautiful thing about task analysis is that it is suited to programming. Programmers already spend a large fraction of their time decomposing tasks. However, their normal focus is on machine tasks not human tasks.
Like a task analysis, the purpose of a usability test is to figure out how people use stuff. You want to see people interact with stuff and learn what works and what doesn’t. Can people find what they want? What steps do they take? How does the product or service cause them to screw up? And so on.
Conducting a usability test can be quick and easy. You can ask just about anyone to sit down and use a web site for example. Of course it is best to have a structured environment, scenarios, a representative sample of users, and so on. But, it is better to have a sloppy usability test at the start of a project than it is to have a great usability test at the end of a project.
Get Your People Thinking About Other People
I’ve really cut some corners in this article but I hope you get some of the main points. You want designers and developers involved in the usability process because once they understand users better, they will create more usable stuff. That’s a beautiful thing.
It will take 1-2 of solid training days to get your designers and developers up to speed. A usability specialist (with training experience) should do the training and the focus should be about 25-30% conceptual and 70-75% practical. The concepts aren’t too difficult but training people to listen and have empathy is no small chore. Usability specialists are empathy machines whereas designers and developers are typically a bit more narcissistic.
(My apologies to all of you loving, caring developers.)
I’ll end this by saying that usability is a great investment. You are probably reading this because you already care about usability and you understand its value. However, instead of thinking about usability as being the province of usability specialists think about your entire company embracing usability. Why not start with your designers and developers?
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