Re: Usability abuse? (Take II)

Subject: Re: Usability abuse? (Take II)
From: Chuck Martin <cm -at- writeforyou -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2004 16:12:12 -0800


Andrew Plato wrote:
<snip>

Riiiight...What is the difference between these two statements:

A: "I think this is designed poorly, its hard to use."

B: "75% of our beta users said they didn't like this feature, it was hard to use."

"A" is a SUBJECTIVE judgement of something based on a single individual's
experience. In other words, griping.

"B" is a OBJECTIVE judgement based on the gripes of many people or a market
segment. In other words, usability analysis.
<snip>

But the commonality in the two statements is that they both carry no useful information for people who design and develop the product.

Usability isn't about opinion. It uses fundamental tenets just like other disciplines and it encompasses knowledge in more areas than many, areas such as industrial design, cognitive psychology, and more.

B is not an "objective" judgment. It is a statistic married to two subjective judgments.

Objective statements might be something along the lines of "Four out of six people in this test took more than 10 seconds to find the XYZ widget on the page that they needed to click to go to the next step, and one of those asked for help before proceeding." From such an objective statement, usability professionals might conclude that the XYZ widget had problems with its design, its; placement, its wording, some other factor, or any combination of these. The next step would (hopefully) be to make some changes and test again.

This is a small peek into the world of real usability (or, to use a term that I think is more descriptive and accurate, interaction design). Opinion, however, it is not.

--
--
Chuck Martin
User Assistance & Experience Engineer
twriter "at" sonic "dot" net www.writeforyou.com

"I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me.
The day may come when the courage of Men fail, when we forsake our
friends and break all bonds of fellowship. But it is not this day!
This day, we fight!"
- Aragorn

"All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given you."
- Gandalf

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