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Subject:Usability Assessment: A Common Sense Activity From:Steven Oppenheimer <Steven -at- OppenheimerCommunications -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Fri, 12 Nov 2004 12:58:29 -0500
>>Technical Writers are not usability experts. Not by a long shot. Sure,
>>they can be, but generally tech writers are about as equally savvy in
>>usability as developers, marketeers, and garbage collectors.
Anyone who uses a product, whether during development or real-world use, is
ibso-facto a usability expert. The idea of specialized expertise in this
area is ludicrous, but is just part-and-parcel of our technocratic culture
that wants to delegate judgment in every common sense activity -- from
teaching to parenting to ethics -- to an elite panel of (self-appointed)
experts. The implicit claim is that some carefully researched theoretical
framework is required to constructively encounter a certain type of problem
(parenting, teaching, ethics, software usability assessment); in fact,
Ivory-tower theoretical frameworks are, nine times out of ten, wildly
divorced from reality.
As a practical matter, technical writers are the ideal usability experts
during the development cycle because, if the documentation is being done
right, it is thorough and comprehensive. That means the tech writer has to
explore every nook and cranny of the application; and if the
user-interface is not user-friendly or well-organized, the tech writer will
run into the problems real quickly.
By contrast, developers typically only see a small portion of the entire
application (the part they are developing), plus they are too close to it
to see their own mistakes. Marketing typically looks at just enough to
write the marketing material, so they don't explore the product in-depth
(but if they do, they can also serve as usability experts as well).
Garbage collectors can be perfectly good usability experts, if the software
is something that would be used by garbage collectors, either in their work
or in their life outside of work.
The point is precisely for the software (or other technology) to be
accessible to whomever uses it. So, users of any kind -- provided they are
sufficiently articulate to identify the problems they encounter, and
imaginative enough to offer alternatives -- are the usability experts.
Of course, there is the question of who should provide an initial design
for a user interface to begin with. As you can gather, I'm highly
skeptical -- based on painful professional experience -- of specialized
"experts" who dogmatically adhere to some formal design principles, and
often sweep common sense and intuition under the rug. I'd rather have a
systems analyst sit down with end-users and developers to hack out a
general system design, rather than bring in someone who wants to impose
theoretical principles on the design process.
And when it comes to the fine details of a user interface, I'd prefer to
leave the final decisions in the hands of the developers themselves, who
can balance the user requirements with the various strengths and
limitations of the software authoring libraries they use. Plus, these guys
have been users themselves, and can bring their own experience and
intuition to bear on the design process, and the final look and feel of a
product.
Steven Oppenheimer, M.A.
Oppenheimer Communications
Technical and Business Writing: From Complexity To Clarity (SM)
Steven -at- OpComm -dot- com www.OpComm.com (301) 468-9233
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