RE: Usability Assessment: A Common Sense Activity

["Bonnie Granat" <bgranat -at- granatedit -dot- com>]

> Anyone who uses a product, whether during development or 
> real-world use, is ibso-facto a usability expert.  The idea 
> of specialized expertise in this area is ludicrous, but is 
> just part-and-parcel of our technocratic culture that wants 
> to delegate judgment in every common sense activity -- from 
> teaching to parenting to ethics -- to an elite panel of 
> (self-appointed) experts.  The implicit claim is that some 
> carefully researched theoretical framework is required to 
> constructively encounter a certain type of problem 
> (parenting, teaching, ethics, software usability assessment); 
>  in fact, Ivory-tower theoretical frameworks are, nine times 
> out of ten, wildly divorced from reality.

Your view, in fact, may be shared by many others, which would explain why a
glut of ill-designed and ugly software exists today.


Bonnie Granat
http://www.GranatEdit.com 
Cambridge, Massachusetts



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