Re: usability

[Elna Tymes <etymes -at- LTS -dot- COM>]

Melissa -

> While the products themselves are marvelous and our users adore them,
> these new features are giving the users some problems after
> deployment.  (Big surprise, huh?)  So we'd like to demonstrate why
> usability testing is a Good Thing and how we can implement it here.

The single best way to demonstrate [lack of] usability is to run a
private little test on a small sample of users.  If you can find some
'naive users' within your company, people who aren't associated with the
development organization, your demo will be quite credible.

Last December I had a running disagreement with a development manager
about a tool his group was coding.  The interface was just plain awful,
but I knew better than to criticize his 'baby.' Eventually I managed to
get his agreement to try the program out on a new person from sales
(sales people were the target audience) who had only been with the
company a few days.  We told this guy that his naivete was the most
important thing he brougt to this session, so when he sat down at the
computer he was quite willing to talk about how he felt about the
program.  He got very little help from us in starting to work with the
program, and I took notes like mad.  After about 15 minutes (the
agreed-upon test period) he said he had finally reached the point where
he could do some of what he already knew how to do in Powerpoint.  Which
proved our point exactly. (We'd already established that, with this
audience, we had to justify their spending time on it in the first 15
minutes or they'd walk away.)  THEN he said that, were he an ordinary
customer, he'd probably give up on it and look elsewhere.

You don't need more than a few examples like this to prove your point to
the IT group.  But you DO need to present your findings in believable
fashion.  (A video camera is a wonderful tool in cases like this.)

Another place to turn for usability evidence is a log of calls taken by
your tech support organization.  My company, in addition to doing other
things, provides tech support for a small software company that produces
a popular screensaver.  They have made a number of modifications to the
original program because of the types of problems we've heard about.

Good luck!

Elna Tymes
Los Trancos Systems