Re: perception of user experience levels

[SteveFJong -at- aol -dot- com]

Sean Hower <hokumhome -at- freehomepage -dot- com> asks about the difference of opinion between SMEs and trainers about user experience levels, and asks if anyone else has noticed it.

Definitely! I have seen engineers postulate that our users knew everything they did and *more* I asked our support manager if such people even existed, and he said "Yes, but we can't afford to hire them."

I fear a more realistic picture of users came from a trainer of end users of another product I helped document. "What are they like?" I asked, whereupon she put her hand on her hip and mimed chewing gum with her mouth open. I was horrified. "What about the back-office users?" I asked. She mimed chewing gum with her mouth closed.

Are you sure you want to tell them how to formulate a complex cross-table database search?

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