World Usability Day, part 2
Looking back at yesterday's post, it occurs to me that I didn't quite do justice to either the event or the other seven presenters. Truth be told, I skipped out on the last two sessions, so my apologies for leaving out the speakers from Motorola and IIT. Here's my quick and dirty overview, completely and unapologetically biased towards my own interests.After Don Norman's keynote, we heard from two representatives of Blue Cross Blue Shield's eSolutions group. BCBS has switched from tracking general usability metrics to task-based "success" rates. For instance, if a visitor to the site wants to find the status of a past claim, can they do it and how difficult is it? They didn't provide a lot of details, but I liked the more practical approach. Knowing that a website got a Usability Quotient of 4.56 doesn't do much for me, personally.
Next up was GE Healthcare. Two interesting points from them: (1) they have quantified the impact of usability on their product line, and it's $22M (not too shabby), and (2) GE considers the user-interface as a critical part of their brand image. I was happy to hear the latter point; they feel that doctors and hospitals specifically purchase from GE for a consistent and well-engineered look and feel.
Whirlpool gave us a walkthrough of how they designed the menu and interface for one of their latest microwaves. Interesting to note that Whirlpool has a global usability group, starts the usability testing process as soon as product design begins, and actually does in-home interviews with customers to observe how regular folks use their products.
A UIC professor spoke on how "citizen-centered design" is impacting the machinations of government, in everything from documents to public policy. The topic was a bit of a departure from the other presentations, but it provided a unique overview of how concepts of usability are permeating everyday life.
Finally (at least in my day), the usability consulting firm TandemSeven discussed implementing international projects from a user-experience standpoint. They focused primarily on implementation (process and documentation), but raised solid points about how important context is to the concept of usability. What's "usable" can't be defined in a one-sized-fits-all way, and online functions and processes often need to be flexible to adapt to different types of users and cultures.
