Monthly Wrap
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Usability 101
Elaine Randolph at the June Berkeley chapter meeting
by Robert Wazeka

"Usability affects everybody everywhere," Elaine Randolph told Berkeley STC members to lead off the program segment of the Chapter's September monthly meeting. To illustrate her point, Randolph cited the difficulties she had in figuring out something as simple as how to operate her husband's car radio because of its badly designed interface.

As the immediate past president of the Orange County STC and currently a JET Manager at Unisys, Randolph has been a technical communicator for twenty years, during which time she has educated herself on usability issues and has done extensive work in implementing good usability principles in computer hardware and software. She has given her presentation, entitled Usability 101: The Basics of User-Centered Design (UCD) to numerous audiences around the country.

Companies undervalue usability, Randolph said, because they want to do everything "quick, dirty, and cheap." What producers ignore is that poor usability can result in higher support costs and decreased sales; and what purchasers ignore is that products they buy with poorly designed interfaces can cause difficulty and lost time for their employees. Users, she said, want products that are effective, efficient, engaging, error tolerant, and easy to learn—the "five E's".
What we as technical communicators must do is to become "usability champions" where we work. Randolph says that we have six effective tools at our disposal—site visits, surveys, focus groups, prototyping, heuristic evaluation, and usability tests. These six tools together comprise what she calls "the UCD Toolkit." By starting small and by selecting the tool or tools appropriate to the task, we can begin achieving success one step at a time.

Randolph went on to describe effective ways of using each tool, citing research studies and illustrating her points with a wealth of examples drawn from her own experience.

• Site Visits depend upon structured interviews and observation. It's important to tell the difference between what users actually do and what they say they do. Videotaping and visits to the home or office where a product is being used can improve the accuracy of the information.
• Surveys are effective only if the questions are carefully and unambiguously designed, if they are tested beforehand, and if the survey sample is large enough.
• Focus Groups of 8-12 people aren't good for generating quantifiable data, but they are appropriate for identifying attitudes and feelings. It's important to record these sessions either on audio or video.
• Prototyping, typically done in Visual Basic or a similar tool, is an excellent way of testing user reactions to a variety of designs. Design teams can make changes dynamically and test several iterations of a product.
• Heuristic Evaluation is a way of evaluating an interface by using a set of design principles or guidelines. Such evaluations are best done by usability experts.
• Usability Tests are given to a group of users in a controlled environment. The users are asked to perform specific tasks and to "think aloud" as they work. Observers collect data and make recommendations for change.

One or more of these tools might be appropriate for each of the five phases of software development - feasibility, design, development, integration, and support. For example, site visits, surveys, and focus groups all can be useful during feasibility, but not heuristic evaluation or usability testing; in the design phase, by contrast, only prototyping would be appropriate.

A strong advocate of attending conferences, Randolph says she learned much of what she knows by going to post-conference STC workshops. Those interested in pursuing the issue of usability can join either STC's Usability SIG or the Usability Professionals' Association.

Further Reading

Elaine Randolph recommended four books for further information:

• JoAnn Hackos and Janice C. Redish, User and Task Analysis for Interface Design.
• Jeff Johnson , GUI Bloopers
• Steve Krug, Don't Make Me Think
• Jeffrey Rubin, Handbook of Usability Testing