I'll just add that nothing I've done has ever been more persuasive to a dev team than producing a highlight reel. Watching one person struggle with an interaction is one thing, watching 5 users have the same problem in 5 1 minute clips is quite another.
The change in the way the work and the recommendations are perceived is really amazing. --Amy -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of paul bryan Sent: Tuesday, August 25, 2009 8:03 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Usability Reports: A waste of time? The scope and contents of a usability report should be tailored to reflect the organizational context in which it is sponsored and produced. If you are internal to the organization, and the organization is small, then I think a bullet list of recommended changes that can be discussed in person will probably be more effective than a report. In the event that you are working as a team member in an Agile environment, then I think the report needs to be tailored to the local flavor of Agile, and scheduled to conclude one cycle ahead of development, so that it can be immediately digested and acted upon. If you are external to the organization and it is very large, then I think a written report of findings and recommendations can be very useful: 1. The report is a way for you to fully explain the design direction and changes you are advocating, so that the people who don't agree with you will need to prepare a good case for ignoring your recommendations. 2. Stakeholders who have a vested interest in the results but who can't or won't sit down with you to discuss your findings can understand the reasoning behind the changes you're recommending. 3. Third parties who get involved further down the road have a concise, logical presentation of factors that influence the success of the design. 4. Site owners can wave a large, weighty, well-designed document as justification for doing what they wanted to do before you wrote the report. Frustrating, but it happens, and I can't say that I would turn down a project tomorrow even if knew ahead of time that was going to happen. Why? Because I found out that this happened with a very large client; but then a couple of years later I learned that subsequent people had picked it up and got a lot of value from the report. I always try to scope in a brief user interview along with usability testing, so that a study's findings are more generally applicable to a customer's interaction with the company's interactive offering in general, as well as their response to the specific design in question. This makes the study useful long after that particular design iteration has come and gone, because it uses specific results to address concepts that will remain relevant. For example, in a usability test I might find that certain types of users have difficulty undertanding how to pair a mobile device with a carrier plan. I will recommend a way to fix the particular design that was tested so that users will be successful when it launches, but I will also frame the users' challenge more generally so that the design continually evolves to address this fundamental customer issue more effectively. /pb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=44960 ________________________________________________________________ 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 ________________________________________________________________ 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
