About the Usability SIG
Member Profiles: January 2000

Edited by Craig Marion, Membership Coordinator

The international scope of our work seems to be asserting itself this quarter. The feature article in the Fall issue of Hyperviews Online, the newsletter of our sister Online SIG, discusses what it's like to be an online technical communicator in seven locations in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Because of some work I had posted on the Internet, I was invited to speak on November 15 at a workshop in Fontainebleau, France. This quarter we received profiles from Usability SIG members in India, the Netherlands, and the U.K.  Thanks to all of you for deciding to let other members know who you are. Welcome to our new members!

• Leo Lentz
• Panangipally Aruna
• Alexandra Robinette
• Maree Boyd

Leo Lentz
Utrecht University
The Netherlands
L.Lentz@let.uu.nl
www.let.uu.nl/~Leo.Lentz/

What is the relation between an academic in a Dutch University and Usability Testing? The answer is: teaching in writing courses. There is no better way of teaching students how to write good documentation then confronting them with feedback of readers in real life. Five readers in everyday life have more impact on their writing than ten university teachers. Which does not mean that they will miss my own reactions on their writing. Teaching students how to perform a usability test means giving attention to reading processes and evaluation methodology. This is what I am doing now for some ten years.

What are the most important issues in usability? These are my three favorites. (1) Doing research that makes clear that technical writers and other kinds of experts just predict some 20% of the problems that readers detect in a usability study. Conclusion: you can't do without usability testing. Together with Menno de Jong (Twente University) I have published some articles on this issue. (2) Trying to reduce the costs of testing. We have developed Focus, a software program that enables respondents to give feedback on documents and that helps the evaluator to organize this feedback in an efficient way. Result: it takes one or two hours to collect feedback of dozens of readers, provided you have a lab with sufficient computers. (3) Translation quality! Recently I started to integrate the field of document design and usability testing with translation studies. This stimulates fascinating usability questions we had never formulated before. Just one question is how many non-native speakers of English di

d you have in your latest usability study? And outside of the university? It's the writing of stimulating literary authors that makes me happy, the music of the oldies we played decades ago, and the walks in the fields and mountains that make me forget the existence of things like documents and usability tests.

Panangipally Aruna
TASC Consulting Private Limited
Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay), India
www.tascindia.com and aruna@tascindia.com

I am an Electronics Engineer who loves technology. I also like to teach and write. Being a documentation specialist and trainer gives me the opportunity to do indulge all three of my passions. I co-founded TASC Consulting Private Limited; a company that offers documentation and training services. It's our belief and experience at TASC Consulting that usability is the cornerstone of a successful project.

In recent times, usability of on-line solutions has been of interest to us. A recent project required us to design an Intranet solution for the quality management process at Mastek; India's third largest software house. Our training division combines usability testing with instructional design when developing courseware especially in the case of WBT and CBT. We have a formal usability testing process and apply it to all our projects. At TASC Consulting, the usability testing process is dynamic and takes into account the shifting technology paradigms. We have a lot to learn and the STC Usability SIG is one forum from which we benefit.

My interests outside of work are reading and classical music. I am a trained vocalist and play the Veena, an ancient Indian musical instrument.

Alexandra Robinette
Worcestershire County Council
Worchester, U.K.
arobinette@worcestershire.gov.uk

After 10 years as a Mac-based information designer working from a management communications consultancy, I decided I wanted to do something new. I took a job with Worcestershire County Council as an Analyst Programmer working in Visual Basic -- trainee, really.

In a way, it is all new to me. I haven't done any coding in 20 years. But the Council promised to train me. The reason they hired me, with virtually no coding ability, was to make use of my understanding of linguistics, human perception and absorption of data and... usability, in order to apply this knowledge to applications development within the organization. So, I get to learn a new skill and I get to use my existing expertise. Big intellectual bonus, fun job.

So far, however, I often feel like a voice crying in the wilderness. A typical response from a colleague when I protested about an inadequately designed application dialog: "Programmers don't need to concern themselves with what it looks like, but only whether it works." I don't know what attitudes are like in the States (outside the STC!), but this is the prevailing feeling in the UK. Sigh... I suppose what it comes down to is how one defines the word works.

Nevertheless, my users love me; and that's what's important to me. I work with a great bunch of folks and I'm making a difference to communication, accessibility and usability within this organization; that feels good. Plus I'm learning new stuff every day. In my spare time, I make music with my friends, singing soul/folk/country/swing/whatever ballads; I also write fantasy and science fiction. I'm having a good time. You can't ask for much more, really.

Maree Boyd
Monaco Enterprises, Inc.
Spokane, WA
maree@monaco.com

I’ve considered myself a writer since the age of 12 when I wrote my first story. It was from the perspective of a developing chicken within an egg. I wanted to be a creative writer but believed I could not make a living writing stories. So, I decided to become a technical writer.

Usability has always been a part of my job because I design and develop information and documentation approaches for end-users. I’ve felt my way using a critical approach to information as my guide. In addition, I stay in touch with customer service. I try to create a flow of information from customer service to my department so that any questions that are educational in nature are added in the next release of the documentation.

I have never worked for a company with the resources to formalize usability. So, I create usability testing in informal ways. We sit in the user’s shoes and perform the tasks. If something doesn’t make sense, we change it. If more information is needed, we add it. We simply do what we can to make our documents as easy to use as possible, with the information the user needs.

While being dedicated to my craft and giving it my full attention and drive, I also have four children at home, ages 6 to 16, that I "manage." For fun, I dirt-bike ride (motorcycle), snow ski, roller blade, garden, sew, and read. And then I have no energy left after that :-).