Ergonaute Café

The Benefits of Institutionalized Usability

2011-11-07T16:07:00.001-05:00

Rami Tabbah - November 7th, 2011

Large organizations cannot fully benefit from usabilityunless it becomes part of their culture and the business focus becomes on whatthe customer will be able to do, rather than the functionality the organizationis ready to offer.

This requires a deep change of culture where multi-disciplinaryteams that include usability specialists are around the table when deciding on products’direction and strategy. This also means developing corporate standards, integratingusability in the delivery framework, making usability an integral part of processdesign and usability metrics part of the overall quality metrics. Ideally, thiswill lead to more realistic and meaningful benchmarks that will impact theorganizations’ strategy. Only then decision makers will be able to maximize thebenefits from usability.

Obviously, any decision maker will be more than happy tohave an increase in revenue, a faster time to market, better customer satisfactionthat improves the brand perception, etc. Usability will become the magicalelement that led to greater ROI than almost any other strategy tried in thepast.

We recently developed a Usability Maturity Model adapted tolarge organizations. Our scale is based on our own observation working withlarge corporations and on a number of standards such as ISO 13407, ISO 15504, ISO TR 18529, Earthy’s HumanCentredness Scale, Nielsen’s Corporate Usability Maturity and Schaffer’s levelswhich are based on Earthy’s.

The advantage of this model is that it identifies where yourorganization is and how to get to the next level. Most importantly, we developedsimple methods to calculate ROI and number of methods adapted to each level.

Curious or interested? Fill out contact form to request a demo..

Top 10 Barriers to User Experience Effectiveness in Large Organizations

2011-10-06T16:22:00.000-04:00

Rami Tabbah - October 6th, 2011

Many organizations have user experience teams or hire consultants. However, user experience is not always a success and many organizations are unable to benefit from the full potential and power of usability and cognitive ergonomics.

I define usability as the tools, processes and methodologies that help engineer user interfaces and measure their success. Cognitive ergonomics is the underlying science behind usability. User experience is a mix of usability, art, branding and marketing that mainly focuses on emotions. If the usability and cognitive ergonomics elements are not dominant in user experience, the results can only be described as random.

When I started to work in the field 20 years ago, we were still in the industrial design and human factors era. Graphics User Interfaces were new and there were very few practical books about usability. Usability practitioners were either pure researchers like those at Xerox Parc or developers with user interface focus working within development teams.The focus was on research and application design.

I remember an interview I had 12 years ago at a software company in Ottawa. The interviewer had a PhD and told me how the company fired 3 very experienced PhDs before her because they could not demonstrate the value of usability. The failure was due to using expensive research without demonstrating ROI. They had not applied Nielsen's 1993 "Discount Usability Engineering" concepts. They required expensive usability labs and statistical numbers of users for their research. The challenge at the time was to convince clients they needed usability then convince them there was value behind it.

Today, the landscape changed. The domination of the Web, the rise of many other interactive gadgets and the ease of designing using previously used patterns, skins, and more, made design seem simple. Many stakeholders feel they can have design opinions because it seems simple. Many designers switch to user experience from other fields and do have the required scientific background. Many agencies use user experience to sell development and other services and offer template-like reports and superficial research. In many cases they use superficial usability arguments to convince clients to cut functionality and reduce the scope of work. Nice looking interfaces are designed. However, they fail the effectiveness and efficiency tests and therefore are not technically usable. The challenge today is to sell "real" usability and demonstrate the difference between properly engineered user interfaces and opinion based user interfaces. As always, design can succeed without proper usability, but this is pure luck and huge risk.

Usability is now more mainstream and more acceptable. The challenges evolved as well. Very few usability practitioners know how to create value and design truly usable products, and very few organizations know how to manage a user experience group to get strategic and competitive advantage from their work.

I remember a 10 years old research by Gartner highlighting the relationship between usability competence and consciousness in E-business organizations. They concluded that, in order to get a strategic and competitive advantage out of usability, organizations needed to be usability conscious and competent. I found and still find that very true. More and more organizations are usability conscious but very few are competent. Over the years and through working with many organizations, I could identify a number of barriers that prevent organizations from becoming usability competent.

1- Distorted understanding of User Experience

User experience is a measurable end to end process. It affects every aspect of a product and has a role in every step of the product life cycle. The earlier it is considered the better the results. Yet, many stakeholders still need to be educated and evangelized. Here are few distortions:

User experience teams are usually called after requirements and use cases are written. Task analysis, a fundamental pillar of usability, can completely change use cases. In my experience, use cases get rewritten few times after UE specialists get involved. Considering personas and developing scenarios with use in mind can change requirements and even the shape of the solution.
Many stakeholders think that design is mainly about layout. Does that mean that, if requirements, processes and use cases lack usability, some makeup will be sufficient to give the user the illusion of a good product? We are not in the business of magic, we are in the business of engineering.
If there is no access to UE specialists, a business analyst designs wireframes. Even if the design seems simple and templates are offered, a business analyst did not study usability to know how to apply the proper design standards. He cannot measure how successful a design is.
User experience is confused with customer experience. The issue is that customer experience focus is mainly procedures and operations and this happens after the product development is over.

2- Who do User Experience specialists report to

In start-ups or in relatively smaller organizations, a UE specialist can report to the CEO or the product owner. In large organizations, because of their size, UE specialists, even if directors or VPs, have very little influence on how products are designed especially when it comes to strategy, design and development framework. This is mainly because a product is usually affected by decisions from different groups that do not report to the same person and that do not coordinate their priorities or time lines. This creates user experience gaps between products and lines of business.

User experience needs to report to the highest levels, be considered a business role, work on all products and projects and work on research projects that fill the gaps between projects and products. This is realizable in a well engineered matrix organization. This can significantly change how products are created and delivered.

3- Is there a User Experience strategy?

When reporting to the top of an organization, the head of a UE department will be in a position to create a user experience strategy with measurable targets. He can be a super product manager that has long term plans, tracks design changes, feature changes, customer support performance and everything that relates to products and users. He can use predictive models to predict changes in user behaviour or performance in case changes are introduced. For example, in a bank, a product manager can change the fee structure to increase revenue or to focus on a a specific group of customers. The head of UE, given his usability experience will know what impact this can really have on clients. He will know how to communicate the changes properly and through all the channels. He will know if clients will react badly and will have recommendations on how to manage the situation.

4- User Experience is usually applied at a project or product level

Users use multiple product and have no product in mind when they look for a service. They don't even have a channel in mind. They have flexible dynamic scenarios of use. They interact with organizations in different ways to achieve different goals.

The role of an organization is to be at the right place and the right time to answer questions and offer solutions. This requires a deep understanding of scenarios of use and more importantly, not to can scenarios in a single product or service. User experience has a very important role to play not only in product design, but cross product and cross channel "scenario discovery" and possibly cross channel and cross product "product design". User experience can fill the gaps no one sees and create opportunities no one thinks of.

5- User Experience is not used to mitigate risk

Before seeing visuals, stakeholders are hit with long requirements and use case documents. Their attitude is usually "everything looks OK on paper" but actually it is “this looks OK until I see it working”.

The beauty of user experience design and usability is that we can prototype a design, measure its success and predict users reactions before there is a product. This should be an integral part of the business case. Before spending on development teams and involving a large number of stakeholders, user experience teams with the help of a limited number of business analysts and stakeholders can demonstrate whether the new product or idea will fly. Start-ups learned this lesson. If they do not discover the acceptability of an idea early enough, they burn their money and go belly up. Large organizations can survive failed projects, but can be much more efficient by investing in user experience at the business case level.

6- Legal recommendations are not questioned

Legal departments are too busy and many stakeholders try to integrate legal requirements to the letter and are reluctant to push for more details or explore alternatives. In fact, legal departments do not have the time to really understand the scenario and adapt their recommendations. Only when user experience teams develop wireframes, it is possible to see the legal requirements in context. In many cases, a good design can make them completely transparent to users. The alternative is usually a complicated process that deters users from using the product.

7- Design is a fiesta for some stakeholders

Design sessions are considered the fun part for many stakeholders and they want to participate, which is good. The issue is that because it seems simple to those who do not know what usability is about,they feel that they opinions have the power of their positions and can block or distort parts of the design canvas without seeing the impact on the bigger picture and the overall user experience. It is very important to know their input is important but the final decision on design is a user experience one. Features may come from business but how they are designed is not their forte.

8- Badly designed User Experience teams

User experience practitioners come from different backgrounds. Obviously, anyone you hire should have the proper education and experience. More importantly, the team profiles should be complementary and adapted to the task. Researchers and different from visual designers and are different from usability engineers.

9- One methodology for all

In many cases, user experience teams develop an in-house methodology and try to apply it to multiple projects. In my experience, this leads to failure. Each project is different and requires a different approach. The teams need to have at least one very experienced individual that can adapt the methodology to each project.

10- Documentation is your enemy

I will not talk about agile. Large organizations have templates and these templates are usually very badly adapted to how to capture user interface designs. There are often repetitions and cross references that make a developer open 7 documents at the same time to figure out how something is supposed to work. No wonder making a work bold in an existing application is a half a day job. Designing these templates is a user experience job that should follow a user and task centric methodology to optimize the use of these documents. They are after all user interfaces.

I am confident that overcoming these barriers can make organizations usability conscious and competent. Remember, because usability is not fully explored,it can have a greaterROI than almost any other strategy you adopt.

SmartBird: Design Principles in Action

2011-07-26T15:48:00.000-04:00

Rami Tabbah - July 26th, 2011

Watching the steps that led to the success of the design of SmartBird was a delight. What drew my attention is how they designed flexible wings by virtually mimicking the bones of a real bird. This reminded me of an important design principle: compatibility with the real world. The more the designer could match the "real world" bird, the more real the SmartBird could function.

Usability heuristics are design principles that lead to successful designs. There are many heuristics. Jacob Nielsen's are the most common, but not my preferred. His "Match between system and the real world" principle includes in its definition "... Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order." A number of standards have similar lists of heuristics. An AFNOR standard includes a "Compatibility" principle and defines it as "the match between users’ characteristics and task characteristics on the one hand, and the organization of the output, input, and dialogue for a given application, on the other hand". An ISO standard includes a similar principle: "Suitability for the task".

It is not always about a user, it is sometimes about an object or machine that has to navigate its "natural" environment while following human direction. The compatibility between the object's physical and functional characteristics, and the environment where it will navigate becomes essential.

We probably need a more generic definition for the compatibility design principle.

The relationship between usability and accessibility.

2009-06-10T17:00:00.000-04:00

Rami Tabbah - October 27th, 2006, updated June 10th 2009

Usability leads to accessibility and vice versa

The essence of accessibility is to offer comparable access to disabled users.

From developers’ perspective, accessibility at the code level allows the disabled to "access" content and therefore makes it usable. Therefore, accessibility leads to usability.

In our experience, this statement is only partially true and becomes not valid when it comes to complex designs and flash or interactive sites.

Accessibility standards and guidelines ensure basic usability. They do not take into account the user types, their scenarios of use and the task model. Real usability for complex designs can only be achieved using a set of usability guidelines combined with analyzing user's strategies through task analysis. The task model changes with user types and disabled users have different task models. To ensure real usability, we need a separate usability exercise for the disabled users.

Without real usability, we cannot reach real accessibility that achieves comparable access.

Accessibility leads to usability at the low level of the task structure while usability leads to accessibility at the higher level of the task structure.

Examples

1- Let us assume that WCAG accessibility guidelines were applied and we got the resulting basic level of usability, which is simply access to all interface elements. Complex designs are still not usable. For example, complex concepts and animations can be replaced by descriptions of the visible content. These descriptions should be written by writers and tested with disabled users. It is not a simple detail the developer will add.

2- The existence of a tab order is not enough. Since the disabled task model is different, a usability exercise is due and the tab order will not necessarily match the layout. This means that there is another hidden design under the visible design and it should be taken seriously and not left to the developer that applies WCAG to the letter. Task analysis and content writing are key at this level.

Accessible design first

Accessibility needs to be addressed at the design level and before development starts Usability specialists, interaction designers and content writers need to design usable and accessible designs and content before the coding phase where WCAG are applied.

If pertinent user centric methods are used, the disabled should be considered categories of users. The normal usability steps apply: personas, tasks, etc.

Failing to have accessibility considered early at the design level and as part of usability planning will lead to complex designs that need to be redesigned to become really accessible and comply with the essence of WCAG.

The secret recipe

What happens most of the time:
1- Build code, ideally follow WCAG at the same time
2- Make it accessible using WCAG, or its essence
3- You now have pages that have components that can be accessed.
If they are simple components, you have a basic level of usability.
If they are complex designs such as conceptual diagrams, the pages are not usable and therefore not accessible because disabled users do not have the same level of access. Other users will be able to understand the concepts.
4- Test for usability and to understand the task model for the disabled.
5- Redesign concepts to simplify them or build an invisible parallel design for the disabled.

What should happen:
1- Integrate accessibility in the usability strategy
2- Design pages that are usable and design content for all types of users including the disabled
3- Create clear requirements for developers
4- Develop using the usability guidelines and WCAG for the code level
5- Test for usability for all types of users

Here the probability of having to redesign is next to nil and the quality of accessibility is superior.

How to select a good color contrast

2009-02-20T11:13:00.000-05:00

Rami Tabbah - 20 February 2009

qIn page design, it is very important to have a good contrast between the foreground and the background colors.

As a rule, the difference in “gray values” between foreground and background colors should be greater than 67%

Steps to measure the contrast:

Take a screen shot of your screen
Take it to an image manipulation program
Convert to grayscale
Compare the gray values of text and background

Designing for the soul

2009-02-15T22:45:00.000-05:00

Rami Tabbah - February 17th 2009

"The name cognition, as used to label a very active field of inquiry in contemporary psychology, is itself quit old. It was first used by St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1244) when he divided the study of behavior into two broad divisions: cognitive, meaning how we know the world, and affect, which was meant to encompass feelings and emotions. Today's definition of cognition is as broad as that of Aquinas." (The Handbook of Psychology)

This suggested to me a link between the basic concepts of spirituality and cognitive engineering, which could impact usability and design.

Humans turn to spirituality to find meaning and relationship with what is beyond. Every one approaches spirituality his own way of course. Spirituality deals with perception at a higher level of abstraction. It deals with senses and emotions.

Looking at usability criteria from a spiritual angle, I came up with criteria for designing for the soul:

1- Love: When designing a product or an interface, the ultimate goal is that the user will love it. When we start using a product, we see it on the shelf, we see a web page link in a list of search results, or we see a web page for the first time, attraction and beauty may play a role. To continue using the product or the web site, it takes more than attraction, it takes comfort, commitment and passion when using it. Isn't this the dream of a designer? Isn't this commitment/loyalty the dream of a product manager?

2- Allowance: In engineering, an allowance is a planned deviation between an actual dimension and a nominal or theoretical dimension. By allowing this deviation, we open the door for freedom. Users are different and do things differently. Users should not be penalized because they are different. We try to manage errors, but we allow enough freedom, flexibility and control. Users should be allowed to choose how to perform their tasks the way they want it and designers should allow this and make sure the process supports this as long as we help the user reach his goals.

3- Intent: In law, intent is the planning and desire to perform an act. This is the ultimate goal of a user. His objective all the time is to reach a goal, find information, purchase an item, etc. A good interface should allow users reach their goals. Intent is the ultimate goal of usefulness and usability combined.

4- Balance: A product that causes the least fatigue is a balanced product. As designers, we know that we need to balance the users abilities and capacities with the effort required from him. Techniques like reducing memory load, simplicity and consistency help us achieve this balance.

5- Fairness: In a relationship, there are expectations. Users that love their applications have expectations like respect and perfection. The best customer service is to be fair with clients. It includes transparency, offering what clients expect, giving a fair value for what clients pay for. A user invests himself, time and emotions in a product. Look at how people show their iPhone around. How they download music and movies and make this tool part of their life. They do invest themselves and the least they expect is to get back what they gave in the form of a bug free product.

The adventures of Daniel Pink and the creativity of Sir Ken Robinson

2008-10-04T19:19:00.000-04:00

Rami Tabbah - October 4th 2008

I attended a talk by Daniel Pink at Rotman School of Management on September 30, 2008. The topic was titled: "Career Secrets No One Ever Told You". Dan presented his new book: "The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need".

The book is a cleaver adaptation of Japanese magna to the North American taste. The topic is a visual evolution of the ideas Dan presented in his other books: "Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself" and "A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future". During his talk, Dan explained how he discovered the power of manga and how ideas can be represented using visual expressions and not only words. In fact, words become complementary to the graphics.

This form of creativity brings me to another presentation I watched after Dan's event: a short talk by Sir Ken Robinson on TED . The title is: "Do schools kill creativity?". Ken made an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity. Linking the dots. Dan says that our future depends on an educational system that focuses more on arts and Ken explains how the current educational system not only gives less importance to arts, but sometimes mistakes the artistic inclination of some children with mental illness and treats them with drugs to calm them down.

My experience with the corporate world showed me how the educational system made most people afraid from creativity and out of the box thinking. I was slightly relieved at the Ontario’s Digital Economy Conference when I saw many examples of creativity in the government and discovered that government can be more flexible than big corporations. I met Glen Milne there and, in his talk, he argued that Ontario should be following the steps of Finland to transform our economy and society. It seems that if we cannot be creative enough, we can always copy more functional examples.

Having a 5 years old in Oakville (you should be laughing if you heard Ken's talk), I feel very concerned about the future. Other than watching my kid carefully, my contribution in the future will be more focus on creativity and using innovation games and similar methods to help my clients discover new concepts and ideas. This may help them change the world, or part of it. I encourage parents to watch Ken's talk, I encourage everyone to read The Adventures of Johnny Bunko, and I encourage policy makers to listen to Glen Milne. In a way, we can all make a difference by voting on October 14th for those we feel can better help future generations.

Macro Usability

2008-04-17T11:14:00.000-04:00

Rami Tabbah - April 17th 2008

Usability principles and criteria apply to more than designing user interfaces and interactiv systems. They apply to how people use buildings and many specialized in designing signs and space. I want to introduce the concept of Macro Usability. Not sure if anyone introduced this term, but I haven't seen it so far in literature, not in ACM Digital Library anyways.

To me, Macro Usability is the usability principles applied to absolutely everything. Like user interfaces and buildings, communities, cities, tax systems, company structures, political systems, and every other system we interact with has to adhere to the usability principles and be evaluated based on usability criteria. The reason is simple: we are humans and we use our the same cognitive senses we user to interact with user interfaces to interact with all other systems we are exposed to.

From Multi pointer interfaces to Surface Computing

2007-06-07T11:20:00.000-04:00

Ergonaute, September 7th, 2006, updated June 7th, 2007

This video demonstrates a revolution in interaction. Instead of using a mouse, the user can use his hands and more importantly, all his fingers... Watch...
http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=j_han&flashEnabled=1

... and that video shows how Microsoft built on the idea. http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid932579976?bclid=932553050&bctid=933742930

ProjectWorld * BusinessAnalystWorld Toronto – 2006

2006-05-10T14:40:00.000-04:00

Ergonaute - May 10th, 2006

Ergonaute will be presenting at

ProjectWorld * BusinessAnalystWorld
Toronto – 2006
On May 11th, 2006 at 1:15
Metro Convenstion Centre

Title: How to map requirements to a usable user interface

In order to have a usable and effective user interface, it is essential to capture real user requirements and scenarios of use. We will introduce a method that allows capturing, structuring, modeling and finally mapping these requirements to a user interface.

* Learn how to capture real user requirements.

* Discover a method that transforms user requirements to a usable, effective and successful user interface.

* Discover how usability is seamlessly integrated in this process.

Speaker:
Rami Tabbah, M.Eng , Managing Director, Ergonaute Consulting

We will also offer a 1 day workshop on the same subject on June 26th,2006

Modules and Wholes - agile usability by committee

2006-03-07T23:38:00.000-05:00

Source: http://michaelandrews.blogspot.com/2005/12/agile-usability-by-committee.html

The Importance of User Experience

2006-03-07T22:59:00.000-05:00

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bryce/106972762/

Ergonaute - March 7th, 2006

A diagram that summarizes what user experience is. A picture that says more than 1000 articles...

Ajax can help detect Where a user clicks

2006-03-03T14:40:00.000-05:00

Source: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/9240

Ergonaute - March 3rd, 2006

Eye tracking systems have been used for years to detect where a user looks on the screen. This has been used in the Stanford Poynter Project.

Matching this information with where users actually click is very useful. Read how Ajax has been used in Plotting the exact X/Y coordinates of clicks on a page. Very interesting results.

Vendors need lessons in usability

2006-03-02T15:02:00.000-05:00

Despite decades of ‘upgrades’, much high-tech office equipment remains woefully difficult to operate.

Kelvyn Taylor- IT Week 13 Feb 2006

Ergonomics and usability are two topics that should be very closely linked. Yet, when you look at much of the technology in a modern IT-rich office, you realise that although a lot of it might be plastered with the stickers that signify regulatory approval of one sort or another, in terms of ergonomics and usability the kit might as well have been designed for a 12-fingered, two-headed, seven-eyed inhabitant of some remote planet.

Let’s take the average flat-screen TFT monitor as an example. It continues a long heritage of poor usability that was honed to a fine art in its predecessor, the CRT.

Convoluted menu systems and impossible-to-read or awkwardly-positioned control buttons may technically not be illegal (UK legislation merely states that “brightness and contrast … shall be easily adjustable”), but they have driven many employees to distraction – surely something that’s not in the spirit of the regulations. Actually, the “unlabelled button” syndrome is probably an unintended consequence of other regulatory bodies that have traditionally disapproved of “distracting” labels on the bezels of monitors.

But more worrying is the lack of attention paid by TFT manufacturers to monitor mounts – an ergonomic rather than a usability issue. The Health and Safety (Display Screen Equipment) regulations of 1992 merely state that a monitor must tilt and swivel easily, which most new TFTs do.

Unfortunately, height adjustment isn’t specifically mentioned, though there is a vague reference to “It shall be possible to use a separate base… or an adjustable table”, which gives the monitor manufacturers a neat escape hole.

Those models out there that can be adjusted for height usually only allow a very limited adjustment of a few inches. I haven’t seen many that will allow the screen to drop to desk level – a shortcoming that doesn’t endear them to people who, for example, wear varifocal spectacles where the close-focus reading area is usually in the bottom third of the lenses (separate “computer spectacles” is a great idea in theory, but only if you’re manacled to your workstation). A notable exception is Samsung’s MagicStand pedestal, which is a three-hinge pivot arrangement, a bit like an Anglepoise lamp, and allows almost unlimited adjustment.

Of course, you can retrofit Vesa mounting arms to give you much better adjustment, but a decent one will cost you as much as the monitor itself.

This is only the tip of the iceberg: the arcane instructions on printers and photocopiers have been standing jokes for years, yet there’s little sign of any improvement despite millions being spent on “human factors” research by manufacturers. And I’m not even going to mention software interfaces.

Perhaps the only hope is that coming through the ranks is a new generation of iPod-influenced engineers and designers who realise that clever technology can also be simple and easy to use.