Hello,
After reading this thread of discussion I feel that I am obligated to
re-introduce myself and my new status to the group. I've beeen reading
XMCA for a long time, but havn't quite feel comfortable enough with my
humble graduate student status to raise a voice. Some of you may
remember seeing my message once in a while, mostly about housekeeping
issues for both XMCA and the website. That was my previous life working
and studying at LCHC.
I am now working as a Usability Engineer at Netscape Communications. I
find Cynthia's post very interesting. I am working in a very similar
situation, interested in the same research agenda, as well as being
plagued by similar practical problems in a day to day basis. The
message also frustrated me, however. I've finally found someone with
similar research interest, and it would have been great to collaborate
with her---only the catch is, she works for our direct competitor, whose
goal is to obliterate Netscape. Tough luck!
Now Cynthia, you know why I'm obligated to re-introduce myself.
Perhaps my situation here at Netscape is a bit easier than Cynthia's.
While she found "access to participation in design...highly protected",
I was placed right smack in the middle of a design group from the
start. I was hired by the manager of the User Experience (Don Norman's
alternative term for User Interface) group to be his intern for the
summer. I did a "very quick and dirty" ethnographic study (of which I'm
not exactly proud), the result of which, to my surprise, was received
with enthusiasm by the designers and is being used in part to guide the
design.
Now that I am working as a regular employee, however, I find my
situation a bit more difficult. While as an intern I was allowed to
pretty much wondered around in different groups and do what I found
interting, as a Usability Engineer I am now working under constraints of
my group and the expectations and responsibilities that come with it.
Jay Lemke wondered if the designers are resistant to letting the users
data drive their design. At least here at Netscape, this is very far
from the truth. In a way the problem of users-driven design is in a way
similar to what Mike talked about in his recent book as the problem of
culture in Psychology. Everybody seems to know that culture is
important and has great implications, the problem is how to
"scientifically" put culture in their research equation. I find that
the designers here at Netscape are wrestling with similar problem.
Everybody understands how important the users are, and trust me the
Marketing guys keep beating it into our heads everyday. The design
process I've seen here always start with the "users" in mind. The
problem is no one seems to truly understand what the "trustworthy" users
data look like.
Since the problem is the "trustworthiness" of the users data, a common
solution to that problem is to make user research look and feel as
"scientific" as possible. This results in an array of "Usability"
research full of statistical data, number of minutes and seconds the
users need to complete a certain task, and so on. In my opinion, this
is a solution in search of a problem.
Traditional Usability Research, as Cynthia put it, is "done after the
fact of design and is often just clean up." More and more I hear
complains from designers that these data don't really give them much
help. The more the designers find these kinds of research unhelpful,
the more they want to ignore the "users data" altogether. They feel
more comfortable with trusting their instincts and design training.
This is the problem I'm struggling with on a day to day basis. There's
still a lot more to be done, and the mountain of obstacles and
institutional constraints appears almost too intimidating to even start
the climb. I''m hanging on to the fact that hiring me is at the least
an acknowledgement of their problems, and maybe even a sign that they'll
be more open to other research outside of their traditonal ways.
I'm also hoping that there's my dissertation waiting at the end of this
journey.
Cynthia, I'll see you at the Usability Professional Association
conference next year. My manager, Janice James, asked me to send
something there too. I'm working on a paper titled "Rethinking
Usability: Ecological (in?)validity in Usability Research."
Pim
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