Heather Desurvire and Lauren Schwartz
User interface designers and usability specialists (HCI Specialists) most often play the role of consultant to software development organizations and management even if they are full-time employees of an organization. Because we are most often in the role of consultant influencing the organizations but not in direct ownership of the deliverables we face special challenges in having our recommendations heard, our designs implemented, and our advice sought.
HCI specialists are facing many of the same or similar issues when working in industry as consultants. Yet, there is rarely a chance or opportunity for HCI Specialists to share their experiences and techniques to resolve some very frustrating problems in this fast-paced environment.
This workshop was organized to give HCI professionals an opportunity to share consulting experiences, effective techniques for working with clients, as well as an arena to ask for advice from other professionals on issues they could not resolve by themselves.
There were sixteen HCI professionals participating in this workshop. Selection of the participants was based on a position paper describing their successes and issues they faced in HCI consulting.
The participants ranged in experience from a few years working as an HCI professional to some with 15 or 20 years in the industry. Participation included not only independent HCI consultants and those who worked for consulting firms; many participants worked for large software companies but acted as a consultant within their organization.
The workshop was structured so that each participant was given the opportunity to present four successful techniques for consulting, why they were successful, and also four unresolved issues they would like some help with. The group then spent time discussing how to resolve these issues, either using techniques already discussed, or new ones garnered from the group's collective experience.
The workshop was structured so that participants would walk away with some new techniques or approaches to consulting from the presentation of successful techniques and the discussion of how to resolve the difficult issues. Over eighty techniques and ideas were presented during the workshop. These effective consulting techniques fell into the following categories
- Diplomatic Skills -- As with any type of consulting it was important that the HCI professional possess good communication skills, and a good sense of diplomacy be visible, and gain trust. These skills take on special importance when the HCI professional must deliver a critique.
- Methods and Process - Setting up a process that includes a methodology. For example, set up the expectation that there is a task analysis, a prototype phase, an expert review, a usability test and an iteration of a prototype. An effective process helps other team members understand what the HCI professional is going to do.
- Demonstrating the value of usability -- Expressing success stories of usability. For example, provide before and after designs. Also, for provide a small usability test or redesign for free to demonstrate its value.
- Staff/Hiring -- Hiring usability and interface design people who have analytical skills, creativity, and great people skills.
- Documentation -- Documentation is an important part of usability. The hope is documentation is not necessary, but if it is it should be easy to understand.
- Training -- Train the team in what usability is, and how it is performed. When the mystery of usability is less intangible, the team members become more open and supportive of it. Provide reports that document the usability activities and results.
The following is a list of issues the participants brought up with the group. One or more solutions were discussed amongst the group.
Testing methods and metrics
- Heuristic Testing - how do we place it in the proper perspective (i.e., not as good a test as with real users, but it has value)?
- Efficacy of portable usability labs
- Measuring the impact of HCI
- How do you define usability -- to determine usability goals
- How do you use usability metrics?
- Capture usability problems from live Beta installations
- Getting to know our actual users, not in-house participants
- Why are studies/visits of real users/sites often perceived as not productive even though HCI professionals rely on this type of interaction?
- Methods for early requirements gathering
- Methods for long term and contextual usability studies
- How to motivate a recently concluded project to measure (usability) gains
- Justifying HCI costs early in development
- Appropriate set of usability metrics/criteria = qualitative metrics
Globalization
- Multi-Disciplinary and inter-cultural collaboration
- Scientific specialty / English textbook
- Language problems -- most CHI information exclusively in English
Education
- How do you explain `Conceptual Model'?
- Education -- who, what level, how much detail, follow-up
- Setting customer's expectations -- What can be done? How long will interface design or usability take? How much will it cost?
- There is a misconception in the software industry that anyone can design a user interface.
Management issues
- Developing new skills in associates
- Integrating other disciplines with human factors (e.g. graphic design, anthropologists, etc.)
- Random demand and scheduling resources
- More design resources
- Developing good CHI skills in new hires
- Scheduling multiple projects with multiple clients
- Lack of Resources
- Who owns usability?
- Dealing with schedule slips
Process
- Getting usability into the development process from the beginning
- `Stealth development' -- feature happy, sneaky developers
- Envisioning / Task analysis
- HCI Problems in work operation
- Convince clients to fund full usability process, not step by step
- Ensuring that enough time and resources given to HCI issues
- Collaborating with domain "experts"
- Results needed yesterday and testing starts tomorrow and the design can't be changed
- Working with developers when they don't want to work with you.
Marketing
- How to get new work?
- What's my price? How much can interface design and usability professionals charge for their services?
- Who should we sell HCI/Usability to? Managers? CIOs? CEOs?
- Develop network of HCI customers & colleagues
- Responsibilities of Marketing vs. Product Development
- Trying to work out the value of an Internet application
Creativity & Design
- What is the best way to manage good ideas while maintaining a good consistent design?
- What is the role standards play in design
- GUI does not equal Good U I
- Industry standard vs. application /corporate style guides
Justification
- Real cost of HCI
- There are publications and authors that do not support good interface design process. One example of this is Alan Cooper's fishtank (you wouldn't ask a fish to design a fish tank).
- Usability costs money
- Why does usability testing (not evaluation) scare the hell out of people?
- How much does this cost?
Vision
- Future of HCI as a stand alone practice
- Being satisfied with "bandaid" solutions
- Focus? (Back end - test; Up -front analysis)
The following is a list of issues the group as a whole could not resolve in this workshop. This is because these issues are not easily nor simply solved. They provided us with much discussion, and opened the way for further discussion.
- No Power -- HCI professionals often find themselves in the position of having a lot of responsibility without having any real authority. How does the HCI professional ensure a quality interface and good usability without actually having control over the development, the schedule, or budget?
- Balancing HCI Evangelism with HCI Practice -- The HCI professional must often spend a substantial amount of time promoting usability. This takes away from the time they have to actually work on projects. How can the HCI professional promote usability and still effectively design and evaluate the applications they are responsible for?
- Lack of management support -- Many mangers do not fully understand the importance of usability nor do they adequately budget time and money for the activity.
- Persuade clients to implement recommendations -- Many clients will spend money to have their applications evaluated for usability but won't follow through and implement the recommendations made by the HCI professional.
- `Window Dressing' perception -- Why do so many software professionals think that usability can be added on after the product is mostly developed?
- Giving the user power over applications that are being developed -- The user's input is important but they should not be driving the design of an application, and their input should be viewed an not correlated to objective user performance.
The workshop provided for all the participants new consulting techniques to utilize, methods for resolving difficult issues and, most importantly, a place where there is a group of people with a shared experience and perspective on HCI work. The group was enthusiastic to continue work on the Problems and Solutions during the year, and expressed interest in meeting again to further the discussions.
Heather Desurvire has been working in the field of HCI, Usability Testing and Evaluation for over nine years. She has conducted usability evaluations for AT&T Bell Laboratories, Bell Communications Research and NYNEX Science and Technology. She has her own consulting business Behavioristics, Inc., which has served several clients including: Microsoft; Citibank; The Peter Norton Group; Symantec; Bankers Trust; Ernst and Young; and United Airlines.
Heather Desurvire can be reached via e-mail at
heatherd@cerfnet.com
or by phone at +1-619-634-1858.
Lauren Schwartz is currently employed by Microsoft as a Senior Consultant for User Interface Design, Internet Design and Usability in New York City. At Microsoft Consulting Services she heads up the user interface team and works with Fortune 50 companies designing useful and usable software products using Microsoft newest technologies. Prior to working for Microsoft Ms. Schwartz worked for Marcam Corporation in Massachusetts as a Principle User Interface Designer and Digital Equipment Corporation as a User Interface Designer and Systems Analyst.
Lauren Schwartz can be reached via e-mail at
laurensc@microsoft.com
or by phone at +1-212-484-1916.
