SpoolCast #3.1: Usability Takes a Holiday (Part 1)
November 7th, 2006
Spoolcast Episode #3.1: Usability Takes a Holiday
Recorded: October 2, 2006
Part 1 of 4
Duration: 27m 37s
Present for the call were Jared Spool, DeWayne Purdy, Lyle Kantrovich, Rashmi Sinha, Nate Bolt, and Josh Porter. You can meet the crew here.
In this episode, the SpoolCast crew convened to discuss:
- Individual and group card sorting techniques
- Incorporating group elements into individual usability testing
- Collaborative recruitment and social collaborative tools
- Accommodating testing on a social scale
- The state of UX organizations across the country
- Whether World Usability Day is helpful or harmful to the community in the long run
We’ve divided the recording into four parts to make it easier to digest.
Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 are now available.
(Here’s a feed that iTunes likes.)
Production assistance on this SpoolCast from Brian Christiansen.
We’d love to hear what you think. Leave your comments below or you can write us at SpoolCast@uie.com.
November 8th, 2006 at 5:36 pm
[...] More about what’s in this episode here. [...]
November 9th, 2006 at 11:07 pm
[...] You can find the first episode and more about what’s in this episode here. [...]
November 13th, 2006 at 4:44 pm
[...] You can find the first episode and more about what’s in this episode here. [...]
November 14th, 2006 at 7:46 am
I find the comment on the backlash against usability in the design community as somewhat hard to digest and too general. Can you quanitfy this?
November 14th, 2006 at 8:13 am
Hi Mark,
I don’t have specific numbers, but finding resistance or disdain for usability practice is not hard to find. One symptom is top-tier designers don’t see a need for it.
For example, over at 37 Signals, Jason Fried is quite blunt when asked if they did usability testing on their Backpack product:
That’s funny. Turns out that’s what all the people who put out crappy interfaces think they do too.
More and more visible people from the design community spend their time talking about how “usability people don’t get it.”
November 17th, 2006 at 11:29 am
I appreciate your point Jared but I also contend that there are a lot of creative minds and designers out there who can be effective in a process as you describe above by merely considering the customer needs during the design process. That´s what expertise is.
And the “testing in the real world” is a best practice, and indeed the only real sphere in which to really get the users needs nailed down for example by allowing user innovation.
But you´re right, there´s a lot of crappy stuff out there, but what is the real reason for this? I don´t agree with a generalisation of Designers Backlash. Instead I see the issue as being the time and space invested in the development process. You know how it goes, the “get it launched and then fix the bugs” attitude.
Good topic for a spoolcast?