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RE: "The rest of the story" (WAS: another twist for instructions)
Subject:RE: "The rest of the story" (WAS: another twist for instructions) From:Sanjay Srikonda <sanjay -dot- srikonda -at- kiodex -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 15 Mar 2001 11:19:16 -0500
Who EVER did usability instructions for IKEA? The Swedish furniture
manufacturer? I tried to assemble a dresser last year a friend of mine
bought and she asked me to put together for her. The only instructions
beyond the pictures of pieces and how they were "supposed" to fit together
were "Follow Me" Completely unhelpful and absolutley stunning that I even
got the thing together. I would have given money to see the usability team
watching users follow these directions.
The dresser was assembled after 4 hours of cursing, I had numerous small
parts left over. The dresser is wobbly. Where I am now we have a "user
experience" team. They work COMPLETELY separately FROM the end-users and
foist their versions of what the interface SHOULD look like based on their
opinions. I've been asking why we need this or that and they just rub their
collective goatees and say, "well, it seems nicer to us." While I try and
use the interface as they envision it and it simply is way too confusing.
Usability in my opinion should go hand in hand with USERS not just what is
perceived. How often has usability been tested and then discarded by
companies that do NOT want to change the "agreed-upon" design?
-----Original Message-----
From: Jo Francis Byrd [mailto:jbyrd -at- byrdwrites -dot- com]
Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2001 11:14 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Cc: TECHWR-L
Subject: Re: "The rest of the story" (WAS: another twist for
instructions)
Most of us have been plagued by instructions which, had they had any
usability testing, would have failed miserably.
This past summer I bought my husband a smoker grill. Assembling it was
a...um...challenge. Accompanied by unseemly language. My dearly beloved
LOVES directions (as opposed to yours truly who is the
read-the-directions-when-all-else-fails type), and they drove us both nuts;
had things out of sequence, didn't tell you to do something at all..... As
noted below, it
had the earmark of instructions written by someone who knew exactly what to
do, could do it in his (or her) sleep, backwards and sideways.
I thought about writing them about their appalling instructions, and I
should have, but I got busy and forgot.
IPCC 01, the IEEE International Professional Communication Conference,
October 24-27, 2001 at historic La Fonda in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA.
CALL FOR PAPERS OPEN UNTIL MARCH 15. http://ieeepcs.org/2001/
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