Usability is short of Ethics, says UsabilityMustDie Proponent

'There are no ethics in usability,' said Chris McEvoy of First Circle and UsabilityMustDie fame, posing a challenge to how user-centred design is interpreted. He told the audience at the "Dust or Magic" conference in Oxford last month about systems that exist to monitor how often staff go to the toilet and then dock their wages accordingly. 'The usability is so great that you don't know you are wearing it,' he said. 'But I don't want to make jobs worse. I won't do that work.'

He drew attention to the recent Alertbox by Jakob Nielsen in which he looks at the economic impact of usability work and questioned Nielsen's assertion that no one suffered through these developments (see Do Productivity Increases Generate Economic Gains?).

'If you are willing to get involved with people, programming is more about people than computers,' he said, calling for a responsible approach that supported users of a system as whole beings. He described his own way of working: having been given what the client thinks is the solution needed, then spending some time working out what the question should have been, before acting. 'This way, I help everyone appear competent,' he said.

He spent some time talking about how to handle compromising data collected as part of a study, that might impact on staff. He described how he went back to the staff in question, discussed the possible outcomes and removed anything that would affect them negatively, such as web logs of surfing classified ads on an intranet, for instance.

In this way, he problematised the practice of usability work and challenged individuals to think through the ethical implications of each act in what is the most user-centred of occupations.

Associated Link: UsabilityMustDie site

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