RE: usability specialists and grad schools

[Sean MacRae <sean -at- rcp -dot- co -dot- uk>]

With regard to usability specialists, I'm not so sure that it's a case of
not developing new software as just not recognising the need for a
specialist in this area. It's not seen as core competence for most teams.

Either the engineers are seen capable of designing UIs that reflect the way
normal users want to work (just as they are capable of writing documentation
that normal users can understand), or it is assumed that any problems will
be addressed when the systems are tested by the users.

I'm sure we all have no problem with that logic.

I managed to get this onto my company's radar after several years' of mild
campaigning. Now if we think we need some extra usability effort, we might
get an outside consultant in...

And that's where a lot of the work is -- consultancy -- just where it's most
likely to dry up in a slow period.

I reckon a lot of tech writers have the core skills required for usability
analysis -- it involves the ability to think like a user, then analyse an
interface to spot where it thinks like an engineer. Then, instead of
documenting your way around the problem areas, you try to work out how the
UI can "document" itself. I bet most of you do that now, only you may not be
encouraged to bring this to the attention of the developers.

Actually, if you can cultivate the skill of the user interview ("What are
you thinking now?" -- "How can I kill that * -at- %$ing paperclip!") you, too can
be seen as a usability guru.

Human factors, HCI and related cognitive psychology qualifications are
relevant if you are _planning_ to make a career in this; but from what I can
see, the usability field is still in the Heroic phase; people fall into it
from a variety of backgrounds. The signs are that it is a field gaining
recognition, and the US is a couple of years ahead of us in the UK at this
point.

The dot-com boom brought usability as little more credibility, as usability
helps to make a site "sticky".


> Subject: usability specialists and grad schools
> From: Amanda Nance <Amanda -dot- Nance -at- VITALPS -dot- COM>
[...]
> Two questions:
> usability specialists. What kinds of jobs do these people have? One 
[...]
> said that most companies do not need a usability person 
> full-time because most companies are not constantly developing new
software. 
> Does anyone agree or disagree based on evidence that is more convincing
than 
> mere opinion?


> 
> 2. I am currently a senior in undergraduate studying technical
> communication. If I wanted to study usability in graduate 
> school, are there
> programs specifically geared toward this, or would I have to 
> find a related
> field to study, such as human-computer interaction or human 
> factors? As a
> side note, I'm curious if anyone on the list has such degrees, or even
> degrees in cognitive psychology, industrial psychology, or industrial
> engineering. Those are fields that seem to overlap with tech 
> writing to some
> degree, and I think they are interesting fields.

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