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Subject:Re: Usability Assessment: A Common Sense Activity From:"Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Fri, 12 Nov 2004 13:23:22 -0800
If you are achieving your objectives (delivering product on-time
that meets its requirements), you will be presented to others by
your management as "being good," or an "expert," because what
they care about is results. If that woman in NYC had crossed
the finish line first and broken all the records, a running form that
looked like a duck and pacing techniques that ran counter to every
coach's training would not have prevented her from going down
in history as one of the race's "great runners." But it doesn't mean
that you'd want to emulate her start teaching her technique to others.
One thing a true "usability expert" can do (and I don't for one
moment claim to be one) is observe different peoples' methods of
accomplishing the same goal and determining which are using
methods that can be effectively emulated by others and which are
just flukes. A lot of the bad product that Bonnie mentioned is the
result of someone taking input from users as gospel.
Gene Kim-Eng
----- Original Message -----
From: "John Posada" <jposada01 -at- yahoo -dot- com>
> If you are doing it in an an unnecessarily complex and convoluted
> way, then you are not very good at it.
>
> It's like technical writing. Creating 20 pages of an unnecessarily
> complex and convoluted process does not make you a good technical
> writer, even if you get to the results.
>
> Getting to the goal is not the same as being good at getting to the
> goal.
>
> NYC just had the marathon. A woman crossed the finish line about 24
> hours after she started...the last one in. Yes, she completed it.
> That doesn't make her good at it.
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