Feature: Must Usability Die?

Usability is a discipline which seeks to achieve positive outcomes, yet in some corners it has developed a negative image – as witnessed by the website usabilitymustdie.com. This article explores some of the reasons as to why this negative image may exist.

One of the attractive aspects of usability is that it is a positive discipline. Reading the ISO standards definition of usability, one encounters words such as 'effective', 'efficient' and 'satisfying', while the goal of the discipline is ultimately to make things better for people. So what could be wrong with that? Recently the website "Usability Must Die” came to our attention. Having worked in ‘usability’ for over 30 years between us, we were intrigued. So, what is the website all about?

Chris McEvoy, creator of the website, identifies problems associated with the increasing popularity of usability over the last 10 years. One is the creation of solutions that solve one problem, only to create a much worse one. Another is a certain smugness from usability practitioners who are good at criticising, but fail to deliver better designs themselves.

Essentially, the problems mentioned in the website come down to usability done badly: the blind and inappropriate following of rules without a full understanding of the tools and methods which lead to an understanding of the bigger picture. How is it that usability has got to this stage?

As the popularity of usability has increased, many people have rushed to ‘get into usability’ without the experience or training required to do the job properly. Predictably, the quality of the discipline has become diluted. You only have to be a member of one of the more popular usability or HCI news groups to witness numerous requests for ‘how to’ information on methods that should be second nature to any trained and experienced usability professional.

The fuel for this fire is provided by industry, particularly the IT consultancy area and design agencies, where having a usability team or a user experience group is seen as a necessity, either because the competitors have one or it is a good selling point. Unfortunately, many have little knowledge of the discipline themselves.

So, how do you fill a position when you don’t understand the job you want to fill? Often, you hire from within. There is always a junior programmer who will see ‘getting into usability’ as a good option either genuinely to do something interesting or as a way to progress their career. The other very common option is to hire externally, but hire the cheapest. This usually means those who are inexperienced or have little in depth training. Two expressions come to mind: ‘the blind leading the blind’ and ‘you get what you pay for’.

Being responsible for usability requires a great deal more than knowing how to run test sessions and reducing data. First and foremost is the understanding of formal research methodology and the extrapolation of this to less formal methods of collecting quantitative and qualitative data. Equally important is to know and understand the development process, understand how usability fits into that process and what activities are most beneficial and when they need to be performed. Probably of most importance is to be able to work with your client to understand how to calculate their return on investment in usability (ROI). There is no clearer way to demonstrate the value of usability then by showing the purchaser what they are getting for their investment in terms of monetary returns.

So what is the solution? It lies in education.

First of all there is a need to educate those who purport to be usability professionals. Unfortunately, reading books and attending tutorials on the subject alone (no matter how famous the presenter) will not turn someone into a usability professional. Instead, it requires a good in-depth education in the field of HCI: including, cognitive psychology, engineering psychology or human factors coupled with experience and mentorship. This takes time.

But education of usability professionals is not enough. The people who hire usability services have to come to expect more. It should be expected that usability providers are professionally qualified, follow an established process, and are able to adapt this process to the needs of any given organisation. Copious examples of previous work should be available where parallels between past cases and the case at hand can be clearly drawn. Anyone hiring a usability professional or usability consultant should have a clear idea of what they have achieved in the past, how they will work and a clear idea of what they will deliver. These providers should then be held accountable, should the deliverables not be of the quality and depth of what was originally promised.

Unfortunately, as long as employers of usability professionals are ignorant of what they really require and go for the easy or cheap option, bad work will continue. ‘New’ usability professionals owe it to themselves to get trained, and usability customers owe it to themselves to demand more. There are many well trained and experienced usability professionals and consultancies, it is knowing how to be one or how to identify one that is the key.

Elisa del Galdo and Jason Williams
Human Factors Europe Ltd

Associated Link: Human Factors

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