Hey, William Brall
I kind of expected this response, sadly this is a open source project so
the prospects of changing the culture around of designing up front as
much as I would want them to, is a slow process.
As you said, we don't want to turn training into usability testing. But
there is so much valuable user feedback in these kind of sessions and I
think we’re wasting it if it doesn’t find its way to people working on
the usability issues.
It might be a strange idea, but these are people who are involved in
every part of the project and are plainly aware of the issues and would
love to share the things they learn during training to the many other
developers.
Bojhan
William Brall schreef:
As a general rule, if the system you developed needs a training course
to understand, it is poorly designed.
Usability study bests not having anything but it doesn't do a very
good job of telling you how to fix problems. It can really only tell
you where there are problems.
That said,
I wouldn't try to turn training into usability testing, your users
are already strained and adding any more complication to the process
can only stand to hurt them. You'll end up with not only a
reputation for a hard to learn system, but with a cludgy and
lackluster training system as well.
My suspicion is you have hit a wall with your current observations.
You can't seem to get any more information out of people, and you
hope that one of us knows a magical spell you can utter to them to
get them to tell you how to fix it.
Let's tackle this from another angle. People were very happy with
dial phones. They worked, they got the job done, they were easy to
use. So why then were they replaced by touch-tone?
Touch-tone is a great deal faster.
Your users are using a dial, and they can't fathom anything beyond
that idiom. They will tell you that they wish it could go faster,
that perhaps a system with a faster moving dial will help them. But
they can't tell you that they need a touch-tone phone because it
doesn't exist yet.
At best, they will tell you what they like about your competition.
Stuff that you can find out cheaper just by looking at your
competition yourself.
What you need isn't a better way to do usability study, you need a
better process for design.
Since you said "I work with a lot of developers who give training on
the system they develop..." I'm going to assume you don't have an
IxD team, or at least one that doesn't do design up front. It sounds
like your programmers are doing the design.
That is the hole you need to patch first. You are looking for a
better way to bail water, when the fix is to patch the roof.
Of course, I might have misunderstood you. Don't take me as the
be-all and end-all. Also, I've been accused of coming off as
abrasive. If this sounded abrasive please try to look past that. I'm
trying to help, not insult you. :)
Will
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Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=34208
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