STC Usability SIG Newsletter
Usability Interface

Pulse of the Usability SIG: Signs of Spring?

by Whitney Quesenbery

The mood on the usability e-lists is somber. At the WinWriters conference in February, every hand in the audience went up when we were asked if we knew someone who was out of work. Successive rounds of budget cuts and layoffs mean that even those who are still employed are on tenterhooks, or working even harder to fill the gaps. On list recently, posts were predicting even harder times ahead and worrying about whether it was time for usability practitioners to look for alternate careers.

But, in the midst of all this gloom, I keep hearing signs that usability is making gains. In the spirit of spring and the hopes of lifting spirits, I’d like to share a few of these tidbits.

• During a conference call, a well-known analyst firm included not only questions about product usability, but also delved into the current state of the usability engineering process. This certainly sounds like a recognition that usability is important—and even an important factor in a product’s success.
• Last month, the Washington DC Usability SIG meeting featured a presentation about new safety regulations from a Washington (state) agency. The presentation and the language of the law had been thoroughly usability tested—and the results are amazing. The work was so successful that a project to update all of the regulations has been started. If the actual text of a law can be made usable—why should any information (online or in print) not be. Visit www.lni.wa.gov/wisha/corerules/ to see for yourself.
• At a global company’s press conference to introduce a new product, "ease of use" was listed as one of the key features. The presentation included an anecdote about how site visits and usability testing had helped the development team understand users better and changed the product design.
• An article called "Usability for Better Customer Relationships" is one of the "ten hottest tutorials" on a web site for marketing professionals. As the web site becomes more important as part of a company’s public face, usability problems just don’t cut it.

My two cents is that this is progress—even if it rarely runs in a simple, straight line. The good news is that more people, in more areas of an organization, are paying attention to usability, but this broad interest also means more ideas about how to meet the goal of systems, products, or web sites that work for users. This chorus of voices may sound confusing, but it offers the possibility for real change if we can create alliances and collaborations among all of the usability advocates, whether they are developers, marketing, QA, webmasters, or managers (to name just a few of the many possibilities).

It will also take more interchanges between different disciplines that contribute to the user experience: information architects, brand strategists, interface and information designers, graphic artists, writers, and usability specialists. Working together, we have more traction and visibility than each community does alone.

One place this conversation will happen is at the conferences. This year’s Usability and Information Design stem is both broad and deep. Three new speakers this year are Lou Rosenfeld, the author of Information Architecture, Keith Instone of UsableWeb.com, and Julie Nowicki, of the UPA, joining an excellent line-up of sessions and four great post-conference workshops. I hope to see many of you there.

On a side note, I have a "past life" as a theatrical lighting designer and wrote about the connection between that work and my current work as a user interface designer of a new online publication called Boxes and Arrows. It’s called "When the Show Must Go On, It’s Time to Collaborate or Die" and appeared in the March issue. There are many fine articles there, including an interview with Jakob Nielsen, and a look at how a development team used personas to discover the errors of their ways.