On Mar 5, 2008, at 1:35 PM, Jeff Howard wrote: > I dug back into the archives to find the original quotes that inspired > my question. I'm particularly interested in understanding of the role > of usability beyond evaluation. Any readings or insights along those > lines would be much appreciated.
The biggest problem you're going to run into is one of the usability field's own making to a certain degree. That is, usability is as much if not more about research as it is about evaluation, which most translate as "testing" unfortunately. Research is the real heart of the matter for good design. Evaluation is often merely a means to satisfy one's own desire to get validation on what they've done, or somehow prove that what they've created was worth the money. But it's almost always an afterthought in that it comes in the point of the process where it has the least influence on what can be altered since it's already been designed in order to be tested. Once you treat evaluation as only one portion of the equation, and a somewhat smaller one at that, imho, and bring research back into the forefront of your corporate culture for your design process, then everything changes. For the better. It also allows you to drop thinking about "usability" as only an evaluation tool, and allows the "useful, usable, desirable" triumvirate to have far depeer meaning. -- Andrei Herasimchuk Principal, Involution Studios innovating the digital world e. [EMAIL PROTECTED] c. +1 408 306 6422 ________________________________________________________________ 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
