World Usability Day 2006
November 14th was World Usability Day. What's that; you didn't buy me anything? Well, I guess I can let it slide, this time. To be honest, until I received a forwarded email from a well-connected contact a couple of weeks before the event, I had never heard of it either. An interesting keynote or two and the fact that the event was free got my attention, so I signed myself up.I won't try to provide a play-by-play of the entire day, but I found a couple of things very interesting. The morning started with a keynote by usability guru Don Norman (of Nielsen Norman Group fame). It was an oddly fascinating, almost free-form overview of the present and future of usability. One thing really struck me: Dr. Norman asked for a show of hands for who was working in which fields. I should note that the industry representation was pretty diverse, including the internet world, consumer goods, healthcare, etc. The vast majority of the roughly 300 attendees, though, were connected, in one way or another, to website development. Even more striking, I didn't see a single hand go up for people involved in sales and marketing.
So, essentially, we have an entire movement devoted to building products that make people's lives easier (the theme of the conference was, in fact, "Making Life Easy"), and yet sales and marketing still haven't gotten on board. Even more interesting, Dr. Norman made no bones about suggesting that this isn't the fault of Corporate America so much as it is of those of us in the design and development community. I think he hit the nail on the head when he defined the core problem: people see usability professionals as problem-finders. We come in after the fact and say "This is why your website (phone, microwave, car) is no good". Nobody wants to hear that, especially not executives. If we're going to be taken seriously, we have to start offering concrete solutions, and we have to fight to be heard earlier in the process, whether it's a website design or a new product under development.
Mike
· Monday, November 27Not sure if I was that well-connected contact or not :) but unfortunately I was unable to miss it, as I would have liked to hear Don Norman, and thanks for the recap.
A term like usability doesn't ring through to sales and marketing. "What do you mean this brochure is not usable?" Perhaps usability needs some sales and marketing of its own - rebranded as something like "clear use and communications" or something that will have a larger appeal.
File this idea under the fact that sometimes you do judge a book by its cover, especially when you don't know what it's about.
Peter M.
· Tuesday, November 28That's a good point, Mike. Usability still has a cetain "duh" factor, for lack of a better word. If you tell someone that their website or product has to be "usable", they'll probably look at you as if to say "duh". Norman said it wasn't about making life "easy", it was about making life "fun"; an interesting distinction, but also not exactly helpful when you get into the details. We've got to start doing a better job of defining what "usable", "easy" (and even "fun") mean in practical terms.