If it were me, I would use a simulation exercise to illustrate the value of usability...nothing too involved, but 15-20 minutes to grab their attention and create interest in the topic.
I am reminded of a scene from 'Men in Black' in which Will Smith's character and some military types are required to take a written exam but they are not given a hard surface on which to write. The 'real' test is to determine which one of them is resourceful enough to pull a nearby table over and use it as a writing surface. The application to usability has to do with *not* assuming that the end-user of whatever we are designing is resourceful enough to figure out things that are painfully obvious to us. Another possibility... Create a timed problem-solving exercise in which teams of 2-3 people have to figure out why a given product is selling poorly and generating heavy customer service call volume. Keep in mind that the audience will forget everything that you say and they will lose, file, or throw away any paper that you put in their hands. What they *can* keep is the idea that usability is worth paying attention to. They could also come away with the understanding that they ignore usability at their own peril. Hello everyone, My company has given me the opportunity to teach incoming technical and project management type folks about what it is that we do. The goal is to help these folks understand where we come in in the overall product development methodology. I have about 2-3 hours to give these folks a sense of what our profession is about, our activities and the value it adds when properly incorporated into a project. So I am curious: given those admittedly loose parameters what topics should I be sure to cover? Thanks Baruch Sachs ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
