Comment: Preaching to the Choir or Moving the Mountain?

I'm off at OOPSLA presenting a half-day tutorial on user-centred design. OOPSLA is probably the best-known and oldest established conference on object-oriented software development. And most software these days is OO in nature, so this is a pretty important conference.

Given its size and status you might think that this was just the place to find practical guidance on designing user interfaces. ...Not the research-based and forward looking HCI content that we get at CHI and HCI, but just good old, down-to-earth 'how to create a usable user-interface'. However, if, like me, you thought that, you'd be wrong.

Aside from my half-day tutorial, there is one other that makes any real claim to being about user interfaces or usability.

But on most of the projects I have been involved with, the bulk of the code has been for the user interface. Maybe developers are getting their training elsewhere? I don't think so.

How many actual software developers do you come across at CHI/HCI or UPA conferences? How many developers could stand several days of the kinds of papers that get presented in these venues? (I admit I know a few and I count myself among them, but it really is pretty uncommon.)

We talk a lot in HCI and usability circles about 'preaching to the choir', but software and web development conferences are really where the important congregation can be found. Shouldn't we perhaps be spending more time trying to persuade others of the need for usable systems than talking amongst ourselves about the latest leading-edge developments in computer-supported cooperative working? It's not that we shouldn't be doing research and talking to each other about it, but who exactly do we think is going to change the face of interactive systems?

Software developers aren't going to be doing it for themselves any time soon. And if we cannot expect software developers at HCI and usability conferences, maybe we ought to be taking the HCI and usability mountain to them?

William Hudson
Syntagm

Aside from his half day tutorial at OOPSLA in Vancouver, William is running a one-day tutorial and workshop on usable web design in London on 3 November, in collaboration with the British HCI Group and the UK UPA. See the Events section for details.

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